How To Take Care Of Your Spider Child (And Other Questionable Ideas)
by Scorch The Earth
Summary: When Steve Rogers brings a child into the tower, Tony Stark figures he's in hell. He's never been good with children, he's never been good with facing his demons, he's never been good at ignoring his crush on Steven Grant Rogers, and young Peter Parker soon turns Tony's world upside down. And Rogers just had to have chosen the kid that was susceptible to radioactive spider bites.
1. Meeting Peter

Tony had been through some shit in his life to put it simply enough. He had endured pain pertaining to both emotional and physical extremes. He had his heart almost ripped to shreds and a car battery attached to his chest in the heat of Afghanistan. He had lived his life in the shadow of his father, had been betrayed by so many people that all his fingers and toes didn't cover anything close to a fourth of that sum. Tony had gone through a wormhole, civil wars, evil killer robots, blood poisoning, self esteem issues, and just overall mental health issues (in abundance, he would add); so yes, Tony thought it fitting enough to slap the nice, clean label on himself and call it "been through shit."

And he was fine with it. Fine with throwing life's lemons out the window with a few choice expletives and working on his cars and suits instead. Fine with substituting sleep with coffee and meals for alcohol (although he was working on that one, he had promised Pepper). He was fine with the way he lived, and the way he dealt with the twist and turns. It was how he functioned, and he had lived long enough already, so something was obviously working for him.

He knew he would break one day of course, he wasn't naive or fancied himself invincible. A man could only handle so much, and Tony's method of ignoring the problem until it went away would one day fail him.

And yet, out of all the things that could have broken the figurative camel's back, out of all the things that could have caused the inevitable tip over the edge, Tony had not expected this.

It had started out as a nice morning. He had woken up from his two-hour power nap with his cheek stuck to the metal workshop desk and the Avengers alarm shrilling in his ear. A quick shuffle with Doctor Doom's latest bots, and they were back by six in the morning. Just in time for Cap's morning run, Clint's peanut gallery hour on the couch while watching TLC, and Tony's usual breakfast. And if Capsicle wasn't there to see him pour a shot of whiskey into his highly caffeinated coffee, well, that was just an added bonus.

It had started out as a nice morning. Pepper had only called nine times, and he had made a breakthrough with JARVIS before eleven o'clock, and the fact that Tony even knew what time it was proved that today was going to be better than most.

It had started out as a nice morning.

Started.

Tony was humming to himself as AC/DC graced his workshop with guitar riffs that shook the glass paneled walls, when JARVIS suddenly interrupted his peaceful morning.

"Sir, Captain Rogers is requesting your assistance on the communal floor." JARVIS informed.

"I'm in the middle of something, J. Tell him to get someone else." Tony mumbled, eyes glued to the screens before him, hands manipulating the virtual model of a new, more flexible cloth that would hopefully leave Bruce with some decency the next time Hulk decided to tap out.

AC/DC began again, and Tony smiled slightly, just starting to hum once more before the music cut off abruptly, interrupted once again by the AI.

"Captain Rogers is insisting you join him."

"Well, tell him to fuck off or something, I'm busy."

"Sir." JARVIS responded, and Tony swore he could hear some cool amusement slipping into the AI's tone.

A few moments passed of silence, and when the music did not return, Tony Stark huffed in defeat, mind successfully distracted and no longer able to focus on the work at hand. With a frown, he swiped at the screens, begrudgingly saving the projects for later. For when he didn't have people rudely breaking the Saturday morning bliss.

"Captain Rogers would like to inform you that this is a team matter, and that this was not something to ignore. Sir." JARVIS announced.

"Did you really tell him to fuck off?" Tony asked with a grin, only imagining the shocked look that only Cap could pull off in the face of foul language, staring up at the ceiling as he always did when talking to Tony's AI.

"I relayed that you respectively declined his request." JARVIS definitely sounded amused now.

"Course you did." Tony snorted, before hopping off of his workshop stool and headed for the door, turning off the workshop lights behind him.

It was a short elevator ride up to the communal floor from his workshop. Each of the Avengers had their respective floors, with their own kitchens, bathrooms, and beds. So as to why they all liked to cook and spend most of their time on the communal floor, Tony didn't really know. He could dream that maybe it could be because the team enjoyed each other and liked spending time together. But Tony wasn't one to get hopeful or attached.

The Avengers had been living in Stark tower for a few months. It would've made sense for them to have moved in years ago, seeing as how they seemed to keep coming together at the beck and call of world-scale problems.

However, the individuals that made up the Avengers really couldn't seem to stay in one place for very long. Cap enjoyed living in run down apartments with no air conditioning in the heart of Brooklyn, Clint apparently enjoyed the farm life, and Tony wasn't sure if Natasha had ever settled down anywhere. Bruce was the only one out of their band of thrown-together heros that had somewhat lived at Stark tower in the past couple of years. And Thor lived in a different realm, so it was safe to say that although they were a team, they didn't stay around each other for very long after they had won the day.

And so, until a couple of months ago, Tony lived alone in his big, beautiful tower.

It hadn't been so lonely when Pepper was still around (and she had been around for a while, for some reason Tony had never been able to fathom). But they had split right before Ultron, and it was mutual, of course it was, except it wasn't, and maybe an empty tower hadn't been the best thing for him then. He had moved to the compound to escape the ghostly memories of Pepper walking in the hallways with her favorite heels. And then Cap had been a right douche, ruining his now second home with bitter feelings, and Tony had quickly moved back to the Tower without a second thought.

Tony was still dealing with everything that had happened in what was now labeled their "Civil War". Cap and him were on friendly enough terms, enough to share his tower without burning it down, so it was safe to say things were getting better.

And it had actually been pretty calm having the team live in his home. The friendly banter seemed to not only exist on coms, and meals shared became something of a tradition. Tony could even possibly say he was making friends. But that was a dangerous thing to think on.

He didn't expect much when the elevator doors slid open. At the worst, he would be met with one of Roger's infamous "Family Meetings." Maybe someone had found the alcohol cabinet lock broken and left to perish on the carpeted floor? Although Tony had done that a week ago by now, so obviously it was their own fault for not being very perceptive.

There weren't many things Tony had expected to greet him in the living room. Had Natasha tried to cook again? Clint gone on a rampage after a riveting episode of "Flip That House"? Had Thor come back from Asgard?

None of these questions held the answer as to what met him, however. And certainly, none of the possibilities he had considered included the squeal of a small boy to meet him when the elevator doors inevitably opened.

A child. A goddamn child.

Panic rose tightly in his throat as the worst thing that could possibly happen, happened.

Tony didn't feel his legs jerk him out of the elevator, and didn't realise he had officially entered the living room until he heard the familiar sound of the elevator doors closing.

Of course, everyone else heard, and heads snapped up from _something_ in Steve Rogers' arms to all look at him.

Including the stare of the something in the Captain's arms.

Warm brown eyes widened as they fell upon Tony, little pink lips forming into a small, awed "o", as if something the small creature saw was amazing. It was sitting in Cap's lap, with some small kid's toy clutched in it's meaty hands. The creature's cheeks were flushed red, as if the small thing had just endured a taxing bout of tickling.

Tony's gaze slid up to the creature's captor, who had the most incriminating grimace of guilt he had ever seen.

"Please tell me you didn't pick a child off the streets like some stray kitten." Tony croaked, throat working around the words dryly. Cap chewed his lip, as if he was trying to find something to convince Tony that this was, in fact, not what happened.

"He wasn't on the street?" Cap managed, and Tony suddenly really wished he had stayed in space and the wormhole had closed behind him.

For some people, this sentiment would be considered dramatic. A few would say this feeling would not be warranted. But Tony hated kids. _Really_ hated kids. With their grabby hands, and needy whines and very fragile limbs that Tony knew from experience that adults with too much alcohol could easily break; kids were not something Tony knew how to do. His parents certainly hadn't taught him how.

Howard hadn't been the best of fathers, though nobody tended to know this information. Howard Stark had been looked up to by all, and Tony had been his disappointing successor. He had taught Tony that the best way to deal with a kid was to not have one. Or to ignore it as if he didn't have one. And yell at it when it wanted to be praised or recognized.

"Nope. No. I want him out." Tony announced, avoiding looking at the small thing still sitting happily in the Captain's lap.

"You can't kick him out, he's a _child_." Bruce said exasperatedly, rolling his eyes until they fell back on the boy with something sympathetic.

"Yeah. A child. Exactly. It needs to go. This is the last thing we need. World saving is our job, not babysitting…" Tony scowled and waved his hand flippantly towards the creature, trying to find the right title for the thing, the "... It."

"'It' has a name, Stark." Rogers responded, with the all-american, disappointed look that the man always seemed to reserve for Tony specifically.

"Tell the man what your name is, sweetie." Natasha hummed next to Cap, eyes locked onto the boy, running a gentle hand through the mousy brown hair. Natasha didn't do "gentle", and this whole experience was really throwing Tony for a panic-inducing loop of not okay.

"Peter!" The boy exclaimed, hoisting the toy up over his head as he announced his name, almost nailing Captain America in the eye with the fist clenched around the toy's leg. And only then did Tony realize that the leg the small boy was clutching to belonged to none other than a scarlet-and-gold plastic action figure with glowing eyes and a circle in his chest.

Tony froze, staring at the figure in "Peter's" hands. Mark 46, he recognized, in all its plastic toy glory. The same suit that was stuffed in some corner in his workshop, waiting to be brought back to a functioning state. With any other suit, Tony would have fixed it by now, caring for it as if it were his own child. But for some reason, every time Tony tried to get to work on Mark 46, the gash across the chestplate that sliced across the cavity for the arc reactor would glare back at him. Something about that shield-edged slash stopped him from fixing any further, as if he would feel the pain all over again in his attempts to heal the suit. Feel the arc reactor sputter in his chest, feel the cold of Siberia seep into his bones as the fear of being left to die alone became more and more realistic-

Tony shocked himself back into the present, finding himself rubbing at the arc reactor as he did whenever he was nervous, or in this case, remembering something that he could be better off not remembering.

The silence that had spread throughout the room, left in the wake of the group watching as Tony left the present for a few moments, was interrupted with a delighted sequel and a soft "oof."

Peter had kicked and squirmed off of Captain Roger's lap, causing the man to let go of the child. Natasha reached to try and catch him as he slipped off the couch, but Peter took the fall with ease, getting right back up on his two feet and barreling over to Tony as if his life depended on getting to him.

It was silly how frozen Tony was, how his jaw clenched as it did when a dangerous threat turned its attention on him. Except this child was not a threat. Peter was just a young kid, loving life and grasping his Iron Man toy, unknowing that the man he was now fastly approaching had scars that ran by the name of PTSD and Anxiety.

"Um, hi, what- what are you doing?" Tony stuttered as Peter grabbed onto the leg of his pants, tugging as any child would do when wanting attention. But Tony could only remember doing the same to his own father, and always being met with a scowl and an aggressive shake so Tony would let go of the material.

Tony felt his heart stutter as he attempted to do anything but what his father had done. He crouched down to the floor cautiously, now closely at Peter's level, and held out a slightly shaking hand. God, this child was so small, so fragile, and Tony didn't know what to do. He was absolute shit when it came to kids, and what was he supposed to say? How much of the english language did Peter know anyway? Was he potty trained yet?

"Hi. Peter. Uh, my name is-"

"Iron Man!" The kid shouted with a delighted squeal, ignoring the outstretched hand, and poking the circular light, lying underneath one of very many band shirts, none-too-gently.

Obviously, the kid had recognized the arc reactor, like any other kid who owned an Iron Man toy, and of course Peter didn't understand that the arc reactor was a big fat no-no. And of course Peter was not Obidah Stone, or a wormhole, or a vibranium shield, but damn it if his body didn't know the difference anymore.

The whole room burst into sudden movement, the tension breaking into panic. It felt as though the air had been knocked out him, a heavy hit to his lungs, and Tony was rocketing out of the crouch, backing away quickly as though Peter had burned him. The child stumbled back and fell on his butt, brown eyes wide in shock and welling up with tears, Tony's sudden movement frightening to the boy.

Tony was shaking something awful as he shuffled back, chest heaving and eyes franticly flickering from object to object, hyper aware of all the people moving and all the things surrounding him.

Peter's crying drew some of the hero's attentions. Natasha and Cap rushed to the rescue, and he watched through bleary eyes as Peter reached his small arms up to the super soldier, the universal sign for "up" in child language.

But he was barely paying attention to this as his lungs compressed and his throat closed up, and Tony swore he could feel the arc reactor failing, swear he could feel the shrapnel piecing his heart, swore he could feel the slice of a shield-

"Shit shit shit shit." Tony hissed like a mantra, grasping at the glowing blue device carved into his chest, not enough oxygen getting to his bloodstream, and god did he have Pallidum poisoning again? Because he felt weak and heavy and scared and something was really, really wrong.

Somehow, Tony found the button for the elevator, and somehow, Tony must have gotten in the elevator, because suddenly he found himself descending down to his workshop, clutching the elevator walls as if they were his only chance of survival.

The doors slid open and Tony stumbled out into the hallway, clutching the reactor as he made his way to the workshop.

"JARVIS," he managed through labored breathing, "Lock access to my workshop. Activate override code 'Fuck Off.' Blackout."

"Sir-"

But Tony wasn't listening to whatever advice his AI had to impart. He was too focused on making his way to the workshop desk, where the sensors for his vitals lay waiting. They were always out, always ready to access at a moments notice when something like this occurred. Of course, they were usually within a moments reach when this type of thing started, able to starve off the panic attack once Tony knew that the arc reactor was still, in fact, functional.

He fumbled with the stool, pushing it out of the way as he quickly taped the sensors to his arms, which was harder than normal due to Tony's horrible shaking.

"Vitals JARVIS. _Now_." Tony gasped, clutching the table with a force that, if Tony had super strength, he would have pulverized the table into dust.

"Heart rate is elevated. It is recommended to take action, in forms of deep breathing and techniques in which calm you. May I suggest-"

"Arc reactor, JARVIS! _Arc reactor!_ " Tony managed, starting to feel lightheaded as his breathing only got worse. There were a few horrifying moments where JARVIS did not respond, and those few moments could have simply been seconds, but it felt like some of the longest few seconds in Tony's life.

"Arc reactor is fully functional." JARVIS responded, something eerily close to sadness laced in the words.

"But- but… Shrapnel, shrapnel, something-" Tony sputtered, the phantom pain piercing his chest.

"Sir. You are experiencing an acute panic attack. Activating Protocol-"

" _Override!_ " Tony shot back, ripping off the sensors before slumping to the ground, putting his head in his hands. The last thing he needed was for JARVIS to summon someone to come keep him company through his attack. The presence of another person had never helped him out of these episodes, and Tony really didn't want to be seen at the moment.

He had thought maybe the panic attacks were all over by now. He hadn't had one in months, really ever since the Avengers had started living in the tower. He thought he had been cured. And he knew that slapping some alcohol on and calling himself "healed" really wasn't how it worked, and he couldn't do that to himself anymore. He was sober for a while now (if he didn't count that really small lapse that included breaking into the liquor cabinet a week ago). He _swore_ he was past this.

"Sir. A friend could be of use to aid your current-," JARVIS began, before Tony quickly interrupted.

"JARVIS, pull up the schematics for Bruce's pants."

"Sir."

"J. It's either this or hitting the bar."

There was a silent pause, and Tony could imagine JARVIS weighing the two distractions, deciding which to be the lesser evil.

"Schematics downloaded." JARVIS announced, and the designs flew up onto multiple holographic blue screens. And if Tony detected slight disappointment in Jarvis's tone, he ignored it.


	2. Hugs, Kisses, and Band-aids too

Tony quickly lost track of time, hiding away in his workshop. There was no actual reason as to why he was still there. He had finished Bruce's new shorts with satisfying results hours ago, and he had been staring at an empty screen for longer than he cared to admit.

It wasn't that he was still experiencing his panic attack. His breathing had stabilized soon after sequestering himself in the workshop, and he had been able to forget about the situation on the communal floor for a brief period of time. Or maybe even a bit longer than a brief period of time.

He hadn't checked the time since rushing in to the workshop, and the blackout windows were in full effect, getting rid of any sun or city lights. Tony knew the Captain had probably stopped through by now, trying to get in the workshop and do his "superhero-fix-it" thing he did whenever he thought Tony needed fixing. Which seemed to be always.

He'd by lying if he said it didn't annoy him. No one ever interrupted him when he decided to hole himself away. People were always more than happy to have him out of the way, instead of having to deal with the eclectic hot mess that he was. Even Rhodey would let him disappear, yet never failing to emphasize that he was only a call away.

Rogers didn't understand this method; he did not do help from afar. He did not let his teammates alone to their thoughts if he thought it was self destruction. In short, the Captain did not believe Tony Stark had the capability to ask for help.

Tony couldn't _really_ be angry with him of course, because the man was exactly right. Tony Stark hated asking for help. Asking for help meant being told that "Stark men didn't need help. Stark men weren't weak. They were made of iron," and- ah, things always seemed to circulate back to his late father, didn't they?

But not asking for help was his choice. He did not need a tall, blond super soldier at his door,demanding that he come up for lunch, no matter what "new fangled technology" he was working on. No matter how "life changing" it was.

Sometimes, Tony wanted to make another new element just to spite Steve Rogers and remind him that, no, he did not just sit and mope in the workshop and yes, he was more than a big man in a suit. He had _earned_ the title genius.

So, soon after Captain America had moved into the tower, Tony created override code "Fuck Off." No matter how hard Rogers knocked, no matter how loud he yelled Tony's name, Jarvis made sure Tony would be blissfully unaware and happily uninterrupted. Even if JARVIS didn't necessarily approve.

Tony blinked at the empty blue screen as his stomach quietly grumbled. It felt like a lunchtime grumble, and maybe it was time to resurface. After all, Tony had left the group with a crying child, he deserved a couple of angry remarks from his teammates over a ham sandwich.

"JARVIS, disengage blackout and 'Fuck Off'."

"Already done, sir."

Tony left the workshop, the lights turning off behind him as he closed the door and began his ascent to the communal floor, much like he did this morning. He hummed to himself, trying to pretend that there was no possibility of a child waiting for him, tried to pretend that a panic attack had not happened in front of his teammates.

" _Anxiety attack? Don't know her,"_ He told himself, chuckling before the elevator doors slid open.

And there was no one. No lights on, no Avengers, no screaming children. Everything was blanketed in the eerie, quiet darkness that followed nighttime. The ceiling-to-floor glass windows were darkened, as they always were when the last Avenger went off to bed. There had been too many instances of nightmare ridden heroes, in which looking outside the window afterwards had only caused more harm than good. The last straw had been Cap, waking up from a nightmare to see the snow outside his window, cold, chilling and threatening to bury him… Tony had never seen someone shiver so violently as Cap had that night, JARVIS calling them all urgently to help their pseudo-freezing teammate. All windows went blackout at bedtime, after that.

"JARVIS, what time is it?" Tony asked, padding blindly into the living room, hands spread out as he attempted to avoid running into anything as he made his way to the kitchen.

"It is five a.m. in the morning, sir. It's Sunday," JARVIS informed.

"Well, shit," Tony hissed under his breath, finally feeling cool tile under his feet as he entered the kitchen.

"As you say, sir."

He had spent the whole day in the workshop. The whole day. Tony couldn't remember what he had even accomplished, but he knew that it hadn't needed the 12 hours to do it.

Cap would be furious. He always preached to Tony about getting good sleep in order to deliver the best performance out on the battlefield. He insisted two hour power naps were not healthy, and coffee was too much of a crutch. Tony had even caught him on the phone, talking to _Pepper_ , asking for advice. Tony didn't even have to imagine the laugh she probably gave him in response, followed by something close to "good luck with that one" or "you're on your own" or "its a lost cause."

Grumbling to himself, he flicked on the lights under the cabinets, letting just enough light wash over the kitchen area without blinding him.

"Tony?" a voice hissed, coming from the darkness in the living area.

Tony jumped in surprise, yelping as he whipped around from pulling the coffee grounds out of the cabinet. He couldn't see who had spoken, and it took an ample amount of squinting to find a shadowy figure, framed by the very faint light coming through the blackout windows as the sun began to slowly rise. They were watching Tony over the back of the couch, and he wasn't as young as he used to be because he really couldn't see who it was and that was a problem.

"It's Bruce," the figure said, amusement dripping from his tone as Tony stopped squinting and grimaced.

"I knew that," Tony mumbled, turning back to the cabinets and grabbing the coffee grounds once more. He had to tiptoe in order to reach the container, put high and out of reach as only Clint Barton did. Any chance to remind Tony that he was short and Clint would take it.

Silence settled over them as he prepared his coffee, pouring the grounds into the filter at the top. His hands didn't seem to want to listen very well, dropping the scoop on their own accord and scattering the mess all over the counter. Tony whispered his choice expletives as he stared at the mess, as if glaring at it would cause it to magically disappear.

"Jitters?" Bruce asked, voice suddenly behind him, and how had Tony not heard him approach? Banner didn't tend to be a quiet person, didn't quiet his footsteps like the super secret assassin's did.

"Something like that. Why are you up?" Tony replied with a question, changing the subject away from his seemingly broken reflexes. Bruce didn't answer for a few seconds, instead opting to wet a paper towel and begin cleaning the coffee grounds off the counter.

"Once I wake up, I can't get back to bed. A curse, but at least I get to watch the sunrise," and wasn't Bruce such a hippie sometimes? Good god, if Tony didn't cherish and need their friendship, he would have so much material to tease with.

Another silence settled as the scientist cleaned the rest of the mess and Tony poured water into the contraption.

"Why are you up?" Bruce inquired with a light tone, as if he had an idea as to why, but wanted to hear it from Tony himself.

"Bruce, please, not now," Tony groaned, "I didn't get any sleep at _all_ , and I just want my goddamn coffee."

"Was it another panic attack? We've talked about this Tony, don't push us away-"

"Why, Doctor Banner, are you trying to diagnose me?"

"No, I-"

"I thought you said you weren't that kind of doctor."

Bruce huffed and looked over at Tony as he threw away the soiled paper towel, giving him a withering frown as he did so. He sighed at his friends expression, and turned back to the coffee maker as he set his preferences with the dials and buttons. Living alone had meant he had never had to change the settings, everything the way he liked it. Now, however, Thor turned everything to espresso and caffeine, without thinking about resetting Tony's preferences before continuing on his day.

"Bruce, I know you're concerned, and I appreciate that, I really do. But some things are best dealt with alone, and right now I'm the last person we need to focus on, because somehow we have a kid, and why the shit do we have a child in our dangerous, crime fighting care?" Tony rambled as the coffee started to brew, and he really needed to know the answers because he did not want to get sued by some social worker services or accused of kidnapping. He did not need to be illegally housing a kid in what could be considered a very unhealthy and unsafe place.

And suddenly Tony was thinking of all the screws lying around in his workshop, and uncovered electric sockets, and sharp table corners, and god why did kids have to be so goddamn breakable-

"Steve found him in one of the apartment complexes near the Doombot fight yesterday. Apparently his guardian got caught in the line of fire. He was hiding under his bed when Steve found him," Bruce explained, sadness written all over his face. Tony's heart stuttered in empathy.

"Guardian?" Tony asked, almost a whisper as he could feel the raw pain ooze down his throat, the pain that came with reading stories about world poverty and dying dogs.

"Nat helped us research the kid after everything settled and social services agreed to keep him in our care. Apparently, Peter's parents died in a mysterious plane crash."

His hand paused as he reached up for his favorite coffee mug, heart stopping for a beat as Tony felt phantom grief for the child. The familiar tug of pain hit too close to home, and suddenly the mood of the conversation had became too heavy for his liking.

"Then Pete will fit right in. I know at least one other person on this team whose parents died due to mysterious causes," Tony snorted, as if sharing something that deeply traumatic with the kid was a funny thing, "Or maybe not so mysterious, because, you know, the mystery is solved."

Bruce sucked in an unsteady breath as Tony resumed grabbing his coffee mug, making fleeting eye contact with the doctor before looking down at the coffee, slowly dripping into the pot. This was one of the subjects they had not breached, pertaining to what had happened in Siberia.

Of course, Rogers and himself had touched on it briefly, a few days after reconnecting. Just enough covering the subject to brush it under the bridge, even though it would probably never be fully under that bridge. And of course, the rest of team had seen the photoage, because debriefing was mandatory and they had insisted there was a reason as to why Iron Man had snapped. And as the story goes, Rogers had reluctantly given over the photoage, standing stalk still and frozen as the day they found him as the team watched on in horror.

And right after that, Clint had called Tony for the first time since the Civil War, informed him that he was a small man with a likely smaller dick, and then demanded he have a bed and room ready for him the next day to crash in.

The Accords had been solved, of course. Ross's downfall had been choosing Tony to help with creating the accords, something that he could easily manipulate. And soon after Siberia, he had made sure to alter and make the Sokovia Accords to be less of a war declaration, and more of a guideline to keep more people safe. Captain America's little team of heroes had been removed from the wanted list, and the world had acted as if nothing happened.

"Tony…" Bruce began, before the genius brushed him off with a lazy wave.

"If I need to talk to someone, you're here, I know. But I don't. No use thinking about it, it won't change what happened," and it was true, nothing would change what had happened. The best thing to do was stuff it under the bridge, even if it didn't fit under said bridge. And Rogers and himself were on speaking terms, no matter that they were slightly strained speaking terms.

They both watched as Tony took the coffee pot, now full with liquid caffeine, and poured himself a cup.

"So, have we officially adopted the kid then? Whose last name is he taking?" Tony joked as he set the pot back in its place and reached for the sugar.

"Not adopted yet. We have to pass a couple of checks. Make the tower Peter-proof. And we have to discuss whether or not we should adopt, to begin with," Bruce opened the fridge and fished out the creamer, handing it to him as he hummed thankfully in return

And this was why Tony liked Bruce. He thought through things, knew this was a team effort, knew that raising a kid meant something very different for everyone. The scientist knew enough to know why Tony had reacted the way he had to the kid, and Tony was forever grateful to not have to explain himself. He didn't have to explain that interacting with a kid meant unwillingly visualizing that kid with a black eye, wondering if that's what he had looked like when Jarvis would swoop in to treat the wound, not speaking a word to the raging, alcoholic father.

"You know Steve is going to want to know what happened. You know how serious he gets with this sort of stuff," Bruce casually stated, eyes connecting as Tony took a sip from the hot cup of coffee. The hot liquid burnt his tongue a little as he snorted in humor.

"I'll just explain it was the Arc Reactor or something. He'll believe it. Anything he can get his hands on so he doesn't have to worry," Tony bemused, walking over to the couch that Bruce had previously sat. He made himself comfortable as the scientist followed him, obviously not willing to give up on the conversation quite yet.

"It's not going to end well if you lie to him. He's not going to know you have a problem with kids, and then Peter is going to become part of our lives. Sooner or later, we both know Steve will find out. And he'll hate on himself for not picking up on it and letting a kid into our lives, and both of you will mope until something drastic happens. Because that's what you do."

Tony wanted to defend himself, state that this was most certainly not what they did. _You had a goddamn war over a disagreement,_ his genius mind supplied, successfully stomping any argument he had. Mollified and slightly put off, Tony grunted into his coffee, looking away from Bruce who was now sitting next to him, and instead focusing his gaze on the tinted black windows. JARVIS was slowly lifting the black on the windows, revealing a growing sunrise to the two men in the communal living room. Bits of sun glinted off the glass table in front of them, sending a rainbow onto the carpeted floor. If he focused, he could watch the dust motes refract in the sunlight, lazily bobbing along without a care in the world. This wasn't the first time he wished he was a dust mote.

"You and I both know why I can't tell him," Tony muttered to the dust motes, feeling Bruce's gaze land on him as his tone turned serious and raw honesty, "This is Howard we're talking about. His _friend_. If Cap hadn't known him, I would have told him about my daddy issues way before I told him about my fear of caves or pools. This… This is just something I can't do to him. Howard never got over losing Cap, and Cap never hesitates to tell tales of Howard, and I just can't break that. Rogers needs those stories and I'm not about to ruin them."

There was a silence, heavier than any of the silences that had become between them thus far. This was something different. A silence that occurred whenever Tony got too personal. A silence that Bruce always seemed hesitant to break, as if wanting to hear more from Tony before the billionaire retreated and resorted back to vulgar jokes and innuendos.

He spared a look to his fellow scientist, whose eyes bore into his own as if he were trying to convey something very important; something that words couldn't capture.

"I don't know where anyone ever got the idea that you were a selfish man," Bruce stated, and Tony's heart felt a little bigger at the sincere words. He gave Dr. Banner a soft morning smile, who in turn gave Tony a warm pat on the shoulder and then watched the sunrise break over the New York clouds.

* * *

They sat there, watching the city slowly come to life, until Tony glanced at the clock and realized the Captain would be passing through shortly, coming back from his morning run for a hearty breakfast and some socialization. And even though he knew Bruce was right, knew that eventually he would have to talk to Rogers about what had happened, Tony wanted to prolong the inevitable for as long as he could. Hiding in the workshop or disappearing to the Avenger's Compound were Tony's common haunts when avoiding confrontation.

And it had worked in the past, when he freaked out over things that the All-American Capsicle didn't quite understand. The first time had been before the Avengers had even moved into the tower. It had happened a couple of years ago, before the Civil War and even before Ultron. It had been one of those rare summer days, where the temperature was just right and Tony hadn't screwed up any of his relationships with the team members just yet. They all were celebrating in the outdoor pool at the newly constructed compound, and god if that didn't seem like ages ago.

They had all been having a grand old time, Cap splashing around with Bruce and Thor in the pool, Natasha and Tony both watching on in amusement from their preferred dry seats. And honestly, Tony shouldn't have been surprised, because only a fool would take their eyes off of Clint Barton and fail to be concerned when the archer was nowhere to be seen. And he was a fool that day, because he was enjoying happiness and thinking about Pepper. Natasha's shout of warning hadn't registered in Tony's lazy brain fast enough before he had suddenly found himself in the water, his chair having been tipped over by the man with the bow himself.

Rogers and Thor must have been laughing, and maybe he had heard Bruce shout angrily and swim towards the soaked billionaire, but he hadn't been able to focus as his body was submerged in water and he found himself back in Afghanistan, not able to breathe and water threatening to invade his lungs.

He had eventually been pulled out of the pool, no help from Tony, shivering and whimpering as they dragged him out of the water. He had curled up into a ball as soon as his body had found cement, protecting himself from something that his teammates couldn't see. Clint had been profusely apologizing, his voice distant, and someone had reached out in an effort to comfort him, but Tony had flinched away, got to his feet, and rushed off, going to his workshop and continuing to hide there for another three days. The team eventually cornered him, and it felt too much like an intervention for Tony's liking. Evidently, the team discussion had been long and uncomfortable, and Tony was sure he had successfully memorized the shape of his shoes by the end of the meeting.

Except this time around of avoiding his problems, Captain Rogers only allowed him one day before deliberately going to find where Tony had sat himself this time. It was almost like their own little game of Hide-and Seek, except he really, really didn't want to be found.

He was in the library, reading one of the very many books on physics, trying to make any headway he could in regards to counteract magic villains. Of course, he hadn't been running into anything enlightening, which wasn't different than the ten other times Tony had read these books to find some answer to his questions. Bruce was making as much headway as him, which was to say none at all. He was successfully feeling burnt out, and was actually considering getting a few winks of sleep, when JARVIS ruined all plans of such.

"Sir, Captain Rogers is headed to your location," JARVIS announced. Tony cursed under his breath and launched off of the couch, hurriedly reaching the bookcase and stuffing the Physics book in the shelves haphazardly before rushing to the entrance, hoping to make it out before Ca-

"Tony?" a muffled voice spoke with a few soft knocks. Tony cursed the world, and specifically cursed JARVIS, who had alerted him too late, fully knowing that there would be no time for him to escape. For a brief second, he wondered if he could hide somewhere in the library, possibly fanangling his way under one of the plush couches. But Cap already knew Tony was in the library, and he would know that the genius was purposefully hiding, because again, JARVIS had given no time to escape.

"Shit. Fuck. Gonna kill… Worst AI… Reprogram his ass…" Tony grumbled in incomplete sentences, wrenching the library doors open.

Cap's fist was raised in the air, as if he had been about to knock again before Tony had opened the door. Obviously, the Captain had not expected him to actually answer,the surprise was written all over his face, from the raised eyebrows to the perfect "o" of his lips.

Resting on his hip sat Peter, Cap's arm around the kid to keep him comfortable and in place. The kid looked at Tony from his position on the good Captain's hip, with those big brown eyes that could melt supervillains and political figures' hearts, putting cute puppies to shame in the process.

Peter quickly ducked his head up against Cap's side, clutching at the man's shirt in a shyness that the child had not exhibited the first time they had met. Tony felt a small tug at his heart at the boy's reaction to seeing him. He had scared the little kid, and not for the first time did he curse himself for not being able to handle children.

"Hey Spangles. What's up?" he said, trying to go for a casual, slightly disinterested tone. However, the rapid tapping of his fingers against the door knob was a quick giveaway to the nervous energy he was trying to reign in.

"Hey Tony," Rogers greeted, sighing slightly as if he were relieved to see the mechanic. There was something about the way he was looking at him, something in those sky blues that made Tony want to run. They were soft and concerned, and he felt on display, those eyes making him feel vulnerable. He didn't like feeling vulnerable, much less in the presence of the six foot hunk of hero, "Peter has something he wants to say to you."

Peter squeaked at the mention of his name and clutched Cap's shirt tighter in his tiny fists, smashing his face into the man's side and attempting to become one with Captain Rogers' torso. It was obvious to Tony that the little boy, in fact, did not have something he wanted to say to him. But it seemed Rogers was having a parenting moment, and so he decided to indulge the Captain.

"Oh? What is it?" Tony asked, eyes flitting down to the boy who was really doing a good job at pretending he wasn't there. Even though he had barely even talked to the kid, he felt a sudden burst of pride run rampant in his chest. This kid was already a master in the art of avoiding, and although that might not have necessarily been a good thing to develop, Tony couldn't help but look in wonder.

However, Cap was obviously displeased with the evasion tactic. He leaned down and whispered something to Peter, detaching the boy from his shirt as he did so, gently lowering him down until the boy's small feet landed on the floor of the library. The two men shared a quick glance, Rogers nodding subtly at Tony to meet the kid half way.

With a stifled sigh, he crouched down to squat at Peter's level, much like he had done Saturday morning, "What's up, Pete?" the waver in his throat did not translate into his words, much to Tony's pleasure, and he watched as the kid shuffled his feet, examining the floor intently with his warm browns. He was already starting to breathe slightly lighter, not enjoying being so close to the child. And yet, he could do this, couldn't he? It was just a small human, and it would be really stupid if his kryptonite was the presence of a young human.

Peter muttered something under his breath, quiet enough that Tony couldn't hear it, but super soldier Rogers probably had.

"You're gonna have to speak up buddy," Cap prompted, the boy looking up at the man as he spoke before turning back to the older man crouching before him. Tony waited patiently, keeping his knee-jerk reaction to run in check as boy made eye contact with him.

"I'm sorry Mr. Iron Man," the kid looked so sincere that Tony almost had to look away, fearing his eyesight might be blinded as it would if one stared straight at the sun, "I'm sorry for making you sad."

His weak heart plummeted as he realized that Peter blamed himself for what had happened on that Saturday morning, had thought that Tony reacted the way he had because of the kid. Which wasn't actually wrong, it had been the kids fault, but the fault mainly befell to the arc reactor for its existence in his chest.

Peter must have seen something in the man's face, because he looked back down at the ground, bottom lip pouting and starting to tremble. And goddam, he might be bad with kids, but there was no way in _hell_ one was going to cry because they thought he was angry.

"Pete, it's okay," and before he knew what he was doing, he was gently placing a calloused hand on the little shoulder. He felt panic settle in his throat, _he was going to break the kid, his hand covered the whole freaking shoulder, but he couldn't take the hand away now, it was too late, holy shit what-_ "It wasn't your fault. It's just, the thing that you poked, this right here?" Tony points to the blue glowing circle, light slightly faded due to the black shirt he was wearing at the moment, "It hurts to touch."

Peter looked straight at the blue circle of which he was referring, staring at it as if it held all the secrets to his small universe. And damn this kid was so innocent, wasn't he? Because no one ever looked at the Arc Reactor unabashedly as the boy was in that moment. Most people avoided looking, and if they couldn't restrain themselves, they would only glance before quickly looking away. Because everyone understood where that circle came from, what it meant, what history it held. The nightmares that it held. But Peter didn't understand or know any of this, so as far as he was concerned, he could stare at the enticing blue circle to his heart's content.

Peter finally looks up at the older man, who is starting to flit his gaze from bookshelf to chair to bookshelf because this kid knows just how to make Tony uncomfortable.

"It hurts?" Peter repeats, demanding Tony's gaze fall back on him. He does as the boy silently commands, nodding to confirm Peter's words. A serious, no nonsense frown graced the small pink lips, and if Tony didn't know better, he would have guessed this was actually Cap's son, because that determined pout had an uncanny likeness to Cap's, "Have you put a bandaid on it?"

Tony tries to stifle his laugh, yet failing and responding in an amused snort. He can see the Captain smile sweetly out of the corner of his vision. It was obvious that Peter was concerned for Tony, and Captain Rogers was clearly enjoying the interaction between the two of them. Tony had to admit, it was admirable that Peter was trying to look after him, suggesting bandaids because that was what the boy had learned to use when one was hurt. Like a little boy scout in the making.

Tony prayed to a god he didn't believe in that this was not happening, because _for fucks sake he could not handle another Steve Rogers and this kid was a living mini-Cap and why, why, WHY couldn't he have been more like Bruce why-_

"Bandaids don't cut it, I'm afraid. Nor do the drugs-" Cap hummed in warning at this, but Tony had long since become immune to sounds of disapproval, "So until my booboo heals, no touching, okay? Are we goo-"

Apparently, they were not good with this, because instead of nodding and backing away, Peter leaned closer until his face made direct contact with the covered cold metal.

Tony went rigid and gripped the child's shoulders, eyes bugging as he looked frantically to the other man. Lungs constricted almost instantly, punching all air out of his gut and leaving him with the uncomfortable feeling of choking on nothing.

"Rogers," Tony wheezed, breath barely making it into his airway as he attempted to retract his grip from the _so_ so small shoulders. Cap was shocked, standing still as if he didn't quite know what to do, which was evidently fine with Peter because he wasn't trying to struggle or make Tony let go of his hold on him. Instead, he held his face against the man's chest, Arc Reactor thrumming against the small rosy cheeks.

If Tony could have pushed, he would have, unapologetically hard. It would make Peter cry and he quite frankly didn't give a shit at that point, but he was frozen and couldn't move and wanted to scream and what the everloving fuck had he done to the world for him to be done so dirty like this?

Panic rose exponentially upward, and his calloused fingers twitched in their hold, and in a few short seconds flight would take control and shove, and-

A quiet smack of lips to the blue circle and Peter was moving away, stepping back as Tony's gaze fell to where the child had been only seconds before. Without realizing it, he unlatched a hand from Peter's right shoulder, bringing it to hover over the spot where the boy's lips had met his black t-shirt.

Of course, he knew. Knew that kisses were signs of affection that kids loved to dish out like birthday invitations. But Tony hadn't learned what a "kiss" was until a girl planted a big fat one on his cheek at the ripe age of nine, and nine years was a really long time to go without knowing what a kiss was, according to the girl that had introduced him to the subject. And it wasn't as if Mrs. Stark hadn't pecked a couple of bruises when Tony was little, but that was only ever when he had been hurt. Never for the act of kissing your son because you loved him. And his parents never really touched enough to add a romantic sense to the word.

Tony had been taught that kisses were painfully intimate. Special. Only to be received or given in times of probable death. He avoided kisses in all of his escapades. They were not something to be shared by people enjoying a nice, noncommittal one night stand.

And yet Peter had given a kiss without hesitation, as if Tony was deserving of that very small smack of lips.

"Kisses to make it better," the boy explained, catching the man's shocked gaze and holding it with sincere determination.

"I… Hm. Well." Tony tried to articulate, but even as he tried to speak, he didn't know what exactly he was wanting to say. Maybe something along the lines of 'please don't do that', or maybe 'we need to learn to stop touching the glowy blue thing', or possibly even 'what the fuck'. But nothing seemed to work around his heavy tongue, and all Tony was left to do was stare at the child as if he had grown a third eyeball and pronounced himself gay as the fourth of July.

"Peter," Tony raised his head up at the voice, and damn if this wasn't the oddest panic attack he had ever had, because instead of everything feeling unbearably fast, it all felt sluggish and heavy, "We aren't allowed to touch Mr. Iron Man's chest."

Peter's eyebrows furrowed at this, and pointed towards Tony, who was still blinking owlishly up at the super soldier, "But kisses make it better."

Captain Rogers softly smiled at this, before crouching down to meet them both at their level. He reached out a hand to gently smooth out Peter's hair, running small brown strands through fingers, and Tony wished someone would have done that for him, "I know kisses make it better, I know. But some people don't feel better with kisses."

Peter looked so horrified, crestfallen written all over his face. Tony quickly looked from the boy to the Captain, flinching when blue eyes met his in a meaningful look. Right. Parenting moment.

"I know you meant well by it, little guy," Tony spoke up, and Peter looked back at him with a new sadness in his warm brown eyes. It seemed like the ever recognizable expression of pity, and yet there was something more to it. Almost as if Pete was grieving for him rather than pitying him.

And then a hug, dear god this kid was going to be the death of him. But Tony let the hug happen because it was carefully placed around his waist, little arms not even remotely making the whole way around. It was obvious Peter was avoiding the reactor, face turned away and straining to resist the comfort he would find by laying it near the mechanic's weak heart.

Tony allowed himself a small, _small_ smile, because this child was so worried about hurting him. Pete was not at all concerned that this should be the other way around, that the adult was supposed to be put together enough to be the comforter. He was concerned with making the older man feel loved. It was a wonder that Tony did not experience cardiac arrest right there in the library.

Soon, however, such mushy feelings dissipated the longer the boy held on. They were replaced by discomfort, and Tony's gaze met Cap's in a silent plead to be released. The super soldier must have gotten the message hidden within his deliberate signaling, and cleared his throat.

Peter stepped away at the noise Cap made and turned to the man, smiling brightly as if everything was better. He wished this was how the world worked, wished hugs could cure all. Yet, for a brief second, watching the true happiness spread on Pete's face, he could almost believe that everything really was suddenly right in the world.

The moment soon ended as the Captain picked Peter up and maneuvered him to a place on his hip once more. Tony rose off the floor as well, both men now standing in the tower's library.

He felt as though some words had to be exchanged. Possibly an apology for the way he had acted that Saturday morning, maybe a half hearted joke would suffice. But no words crawled their way up his throat, and he was left with a gaping mouth and the feeling of a lost sentence.

Captain Rogers smiled, _smiled_ , so sweetly and softly at Tony. And yes, there was most likely pity in that smile, pity for his PTSD and anxiety and all the other demons Rogers knew about but never truly discussed with Tony. Yet he couldn't help but be totally floored by the genuine curve of soft pink lips that the good Captain was giving him.

Tony hesitantly shared a smile in return, and when Cap finally turned around to exit the library, he watched the soldier's broad back retreat down the hall. Sounds of soft, barefooted steps filled the empty hall, and warm smiles were shared between the pair as they left. The man rubbed his nose affectionately against Peter's, the boy could be faintly heard giggling and protesting his 'big nose'.

For a second, watching until they turned the corner and disappeared, Tony allowed himself to call the man Steve.

He rarely let his mind associate 'Steve' to the super soldier. 'Steve' was only ever allowed in very specific moments. 'Captain America' referred to the man that showed himself on the battlefield and when they had first met. 'Captain Rogers' was for the man that organized team building exercises and reminded everyone to get healthy amounts of sleep. 'Rogers' was reserved for the man who had shoved his shield in the Arc Reactor and had left Tony to freeze. 'Capsicle' and 'Spangles' and everything in between was reserved for the man who watched Star Wars for the first time on Thursday Team Movie Night; the man who laughed at subtly dirty jokes despite blushing like the virgin Mary herself. And 'Steve'... 'Steve' was reserved for the man that made Tony's throat clench and caused a smile to effortlessly weasel it's way on his lips without him noticing. 'Steve' was saved for times when Tony couldn't pretend he wasn't a tiny bit attracted to the Star Spangled Man.

He quickly shoved that out his mind, knowing _that_ didn't need any attention, and left the library, closing the doors with a silent click behind him before heading down to Bruce's lab.

Tony was already in the elevator when he realized, dread snuggling itself nice and cozy in the pit of his stomach, he had not told Cap that the Arc Reactor _hadn't_ been the issue at all.


	3. Communication Is Key

Here's the honest to god truth: Steve knew that adopting a child was spontaneous. He knew this was coming from way out of left field, knew that he hadn't even thought about having children before Peter. But when he had found the small boy, curled under the bed with tear tracks streaking down soot-covered cheeks, he knew he would never be the same again.

Many would accuse him of his hero complex, arguing that Steve had only brought Peter home because saving people was the only thing he knew how to do. Of course, this accusation wasn't necessarily wrong. Steve couldn't deny that seeing someone in need caused him to go softer than the drill sergeants from the 40's would have tolerated. But then again, if this had been the reason for taking the child, then Steve should have also been equally okay with sending Peter off with a capable, non-superhero-crime-fighting family.

There was something about Peter, something that immediately convinced Steve that this young child _had_ to be in their family. It reminded him of the times when Bucky and him would finish the crappy, ten cent puzzles on the small wobbly dining table in the dilapidated Brooklyn apartment. That indescribable satisfaction when suddenly, everything made sense. Things were complete, and Steve was certain Peter was the puzzle piece they didn't know they'd been missing.

If someone had told him that finding Peter had been some part of God's plan, he would have believed them in a heartbeat. There had been such raw vulnerability in those brown eyes; it had broken Steve's heart in two and immediately stitched it back together with vibranium sutures. He had always thought the concept of "love at first sight" had been so naive when he saw it in the films. Now, he wasn't so sure they had been far off the mark.

Maybe Steve brought Peter home because he reminded the super soldier of the late Peggy Carter. Sweet, caring, and ready to do the right thing. He had thought he had seen Peggy in those tearful eyes, but that brown wasn't Ms. Carter's shade of brown. It was a beautiful brown, with flecks of gold and dark reds woven subtly into the warm chocolate color. Eyes that were _so_ familiar, and Steve knew he recognized those eyes, knew he was fond of them. But for the life of him he could not put his finger on it.

Regardless, whatever reason that convinced him to take the boy home, it had happened. To Steve's pleasure, the teammates adored Peter. Bruce enjoyed playing with Peter and the boy's Avengers figurines, allowing the boy to defeat him every time. Natasha allowed her motherly "Auntie Nat" persona to shine through, something Steve hadn't known existed until their stay at Barton's home. And Clint treated Pete as he would any of his kids, sneaking blueberry waffles across the table despite the Captain's insistence that Pete had already had more than enough.

And then there was Tony.

Steve's heart had dropped the moment the man stepped out of the elevator that Saturday morning. There had been pain, apprehension, and dare he say fear written all across Tony's face, eyes zeroing in on the child in Steve's lap as if he was seeing the stuff of his nightmares. He should have held on to Peter, should have told the boy to be gentle around Tony, because it was obvious the billionaire had been on edge. Instead, he had let Peter make a beeline to Tony, and everything had gone downhill from there.

Steve had tried, _really_ tried to give Tony the space and time he had needed. Although he didn't exactly approve of Stark's tendency to hide from conflict, he always attempted to give him an ample amount of alone time before approaching. But he couldn't wait three days this time. He barely made it past one, too wrecked by Peter's seemingly constant mood of sadness. The boy had really taken Tony's reaction to heart. Peter hadn't known what he had done wrong, but the guilt was obviously eating him up inside. Steve could not handle seeing Peter feel bad for simply being excited to meet Iron Man, and therefore, Sunday afternoon found themselves confronting a reluctant Tony in the library.

It hadn't gone wrong, necessarily. Stark hadn't ran away, so obviously it had already gone better than it did the first time the two met. But Peter didn't understand the body language of "do not touch", giving away hugs and kisses to a man who didn't seem to know what to do with them. Steve should probably have interfered when the little guy had face planted into Tony's chest, but then again it had been so _gosh darn_ 's gaze had gone so fuzzy and awed, and Steve was sure his heart had melted into a useless puddle.

Quite truthfully, the confrontation went as well as it could have. Tony had still seemed slightly disoriented when they had left, most likely due to the fact that Peter liked to communicate love with touch and the genius wasn't on board with this. But Steve left the library feeling refreshed, knowing that everything was resolved and now the team could move forward with raising of Peter. Because they had fixed the issue with Tony. Peter promised not to touch the blue circle, and that's what had obviously been the problem, so now they were _all_ on the same page. Everything was fine now. Everything was solved.

* * *

Everything was not solved. Something was off with Tony, despite having cleared the air and confronted the issue. Confronting always worked, had always resolved whatever the genius was having a hard time with. Evidently, however, something had gone wrong in the library, because Tony Stark had not spoken a single word.

They were having an Avengers meeting, everyone sitting on couches and chairs as they discussed the newest pressing issue: Peter Parker. It was Monday, and they had all agreed to eat lunch over the topic in the communal living room. Which had been the first sign something was off, because Tony had come out of his workshop without even a grumble of frustration, eyes glued to the Stark Pad held tightly in his grip. Not a single word was uttered from Tony's direction, not even a chuckle.

Steve would have thought the billionaire would have been invested in the discussion at hand. They were talking about everything. Budgets, safety, adoption process, furniture; all things Tony Stark normally took control of, insisting he be the one to oversee the "behind the hero" work. Usually Steve didn't approve of his need to take over everything, overworking himself to the point of exhaustion. But this time, he needed Tony to be the enthusiastic planner he always was. He needed help on this, because he was honestly at a loss.

Yet the genius did not utter a single peep.

"I'm on board with it," Natasha announced, pulling Steve away from the long stare he was giving the unaware mechanic, "It'll be difficult, of course. Peter's not going to have a normal life."

Clint nodded in agreement, "The media will pounce on this once it gets out. And they will find out, we can't keep the kid locked in the tower his whole life."

Steve shifted uncomfortably on the plush couch he was sharing with Bruce, thinking of the media's grabby hands. How they twisted up stories and made up love affairs between them all like it was some fun game. What stories would they craft about Peter? One night stand gone wrong? Pete _did_ look a little bit like Tony… Steve could practically see the press and the tabloids clinging onto that theory. And of course there would be mixed reactions. Some saying that this was great, the boy having the best family to take care of him. Others would bring up the Civil War, collateral damage, the lifestyle; they could bring up the fact that having a child would give them a weakness, something the baddies could manipulate. Steve felt like he was already reading the forums. Blogs upon blogs, speculating the pros and cons to having a child in their care.

"But it'll be worth it," Agent Barton insisted, "We've got more than enough love to go around. We'll give Pete a loving home. And we'll roll with the punches when they hit. Finding a way to keep Peter safe from the big bads is just another step of parenting that other parents probably don't have to worry about as much."

Steve gave Clint a hopeful smile, appreciating the reassurance, knowing that he would be feeling much differently if he didn't have the team supporting him. He then turned to Bruce, sitting next to him on the couch. The doctor was staring intently at Tony, who was still tapping furiously at his Starkpad, offering nothing to the conversation.

"I'm fine with it," Bruce agreed,still not looking away from Tony, "I think Peter would be happy here. What about _you,_ Tony? Are _you_ okay with this? No issues?"

They all turned to the billionaire in question, whose gaze briefly flickered up from the Starkpad. Once he realized all the attention was on him, he quickly looked back down at the screen, successfully avoiding everyone's stares. Something was obviously wrong. Tony didn't reply to Bruce's question, even though he would normally jump at the opportunity to talk. He loved to converse like there was no tomorrow, and rarely ever went quiet, especially when the discussion was something important. And in Steve's book, raising a child was a very important subject.

"Tony?" Steve asked, watching the man's shoulders tense up as he jabbed at the screen harshly, "Is something wrong?"

Tapping ceased, finger held inches from the screen, and Steve knew he had addressed the situation too directly. It was always the freeze, a slight pause in whatever Tony was doing, before the mask slipped tight over him, becoming tight lipped about any emotions. Steve always hated these moments, watching the man close up when he deemed someone had gotten too close. He knew he wasn't a friend, knew that they were both on thin ice around each other ever since Bucky, and he really had no right to be thinking he deserved to see under the well constructed mask. But darn it, it was hard to forget how it had been like when they were friends.

He watched as the man chewed at his bottom lip, before fingers began tapping yet again and eyebrows relaxing from their furrowed expression. The mask was on, and Steve resisted the urge to sigh.

"Nope. No problem," and his voice was too light, too airy, "One happy family. Sounds good."

It was hard not to miss the look of intense disappointment that Bruce sent the billionaire's way. It was the same glare that Steve's mom would give him when she knew he had broken the flower vase, despite his insistence that he hadn't.

"Tony-" Steve tried again, abruptly holding the rest of the sentence in his mouth as Tony shot out of his chair.

" _Well,_ this has been a good talk. I've gotta go work on some… stuff, Pepper will kill me if I don't. Ciao. It's been real."

The rest of the team sat in silence as they watched Tony's retreating figure almost sprint to the stairs. The man never used the stairs, unless he needed to get out of the situation so fast that waiting for the elevator would be too slow. The only other time he had seen Stark take the stairs was when the team sat him down to talk about PTSD, and specifically, what was written in his file pertaining to Afghanistan.

Oh dear Lord in heaven, this wasn't good at all.

Bruce sighed, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

"So I think it's safe to assume Stark isn't actually okay with this whole Peter thing," Clint announced. Steve wanted to scold him for making light of the situation, but he settled for a withering glare instead. It would not do any good to upset another teammate at the moment.

"Does anyone know what that was about?" Steve tried, looking for reactions from any of the others. He had read Tony's files, researching the torture methods mentioned and looking up dictionary definitions. He learned everything he could about what was mentioned in the file. So for the life of him, he could not imagine why Bruce cringed and looked down at his worn hands, fiddling his thumbs nervously.

Natasha must have noticed the doctor's reaction as well, her eyes narrowing, "Bruce? What do you know?"

The man smiled wearily at the assassin for a moment, before looking down at his hands yet again, "We all have our things. Some things we don't want to deal with. There are somethings that don't belong in SHIELD files. Sometimes, there are things we don't want other people to know about. Tony might not always take himself seriously. He sometimes plays the 'playboy' card in hopes of making himself seem like an open book. But Tony hides things too."

"And these things he hides? Are they somehow connected to small children?" Clint asked, and Natasha's eyes suddenly widened, jaw clenching with a tension unrivaled.

"How could a small child be worse than Afghanistan?" Steve questioned, eyes flickering from Natasha to Clint to Bruce, who were now all looking at each other with meaningful glances. It was like some telepathic conversation they were all holding, and he hated it, hated feeling that he was out of the loop. Especially when it was about Tony.

"Steve, you should talk to Tony about this. I tried to convince him to talk to you before you started to hunt him down. But he didn't take my advice, I guess." Bruce explained, his shrug heavy and defeated. The super soldier nodded in silent understanding, patting the scientist on the shoulder softly before standing up, adjourning the discussion for the moment.

The each retired to their rooms, leaving Steve to stand alone in the living room, watching the city below and contemplating just what Tony had felt the need to pull out of his personal file.

* * *

They didn't see Tony for two days, even with Steve conveniently placing himself in places he knew Tony would venture into at certain times of the day. But the genius never showed up, never gave any indication that he was alive after hastily leaving the meeting at lunch. And Cap was worried. Of course he always did this, always hid himself, always disappeared inexplicably. Yet Steve was always able to catch him stumbling into the kitchen and grabbing another cup of coffee (because if there was a coffee machine in the workshop, Tony would never be seen again).

The only evidence that the man was still alive was the small pieces of 'Peter Proofing' that had been laid around the tower. Random things that popped up, such as plastic covers for light sockets and squishy corner covers for table edges. New protocols, like "Feed The Creature", which would supposedly alert a nearby Avenger when Peter was hungry. However, Steve was pretty sure it only alerted him, because Natasha had been in the kitchen when JARVIS alerted the Captain from his workout four floors down. And then there had been protocol "Change The Payload", which was there to alert when Peter needed his diaper changed. And that's when Steve knew that Tony didn't know anything about children, because the five year old child was already potty trained and assured Steve that he was in fact "a big boy" and could use the potty "just fine".

Steve appreciated all that Tony Stark was doing, of course. The 'helping parent from afar' approach seemed to be the one the man was taking, helping in anyway he could without actually interacting. He didn't know why the man was practicing such strained distance, and it bugged him to no end that the man couldn't just express his feelings. Couldn't just tell Steve why he had a problem with Peter.

He swore it had been the Arc Reactor. But it was obvious now that he had been wrong, and maybe Peter's lips on Tony's chest may have not been the best thing to help whatever was going on.

Steve gave in again on Wednesday, resolving himself to find Tony and figuring out what was _really_ bothering Iron Man. Because no matter how thin the ice was, he missed seeing the sleep-deprived genius. It reminded him slightly of Wakanda, when Steve would sit around and jump at small noises, turning and expecting- no, _wanting_ to see the short man stumble by, goatee with a five o'clock shadow and shirt streaked with oil stains. But Tony would never be there, and he would only feel the pit in his stomach grow deeper, knowing he'd lost something that had been important to him. The feeling of missing something that he didn't appreciate when he had it… Tony's absence had been what made him feel alone. He had been sad when Bucky went into the cryofreeze unit, of course he had. But Tony's missing presence was what had made him feel alone.

He had spent 70 years alone under ice. He could not tolerate a single moment more, no matter how much Tony liked to avoid people and disappear into himself.

It was after breakfast, Peter full with blueberry waffles and Steve feeling good after a refreshing morning run, that they got onto the elevator and headed down to Tony's workshop. The mechanic would freak that Steve was bringing Pete down, but maybe catching Stark off his guard by bringing the object that was causing him distress would be what they needed to resolve this.

Peter was excited to see just where Iron Man worked, almost vibrating next to Steve. He gently held the young boy's hand, hoping to keep the kid by his side, because although Tony had been proofing the tower, he assumed the man had not thought to proof his own workshop.

The elevator doors opened, and they were met with heavy rock music, shaking the glass panels of the workshop across the hall. Peter quickly let go of Steve's large hand, instead clasping both of his hands to his ears, music too loud for his sensitive young ears. The Captain did the same, super serum having enhanced his hearing, making Tony's workshop sounds too loud for his eardrums.

The pair walked up to the glass sliding doors, hands plastered to the side of their heads as they peered in. Tony could be seen at his metal workshop table, banging his head to the music as he fiddled with something in his hands. Blue holographic screens surrounded him, causing an eerie blue glow to reflect in his brown eyes. His Arc Reactor shone through an Aerosmith shirt, fabric thin from many times of wear. So much blue. Whoever insisted Tony's colors where red and gold had never met the man, because the color was so obviously the electric blue that he surrounded himself in and housed in his chest.

It was obvious that the man had not been alerted by his AI that the two were at the door. His head bobbing continued, mouthing the words along to the song that Steve only vaguely recognized. And for a second, Steve didn't want to enter the workshop. He wanted to keep watching, Tony singing along to songs and surrounded in Arc Reactor blue. He loved seeing the man in his element. It was some of the only times that the man looked unburdened by the world, finding freedom in guitar riffs and drum solos.

But suddenly the blaring music shut off, JARVIS saying something indescribable from inside the workshop, and Tony whipped his head around to look at Steve, eyes wide in surprise. He looked as if he had been a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. And for some reason, Steve's chest suddenly felt light and fluttery, causing him to give the genius a soft smile and a small wave. Tony evidently didn't know what to do with the smile or the wave, because he frowned at the Captain before focusing his attention back on the thing in his hands. He saw the man move his lips, and suddenly the doors to the workshop slid open.

"What's up Cap?" Tony greeted, not looking up from the device in his hand. It dawned on Steve that Tony had yet to realize that Peter was with him, because although there was tension in the mechanic's shoulders, he didn't look like he was ready to bolt.

However, this blissful ignorance was short lived, because the small vibrating body next to Steve was too excited to keep quiet once he saw Tony.

" _Mister Iron Man!_ "

Cap had never seen Tony Stark flinch as hard as he did then, jumping in the metal stool he was sitting in, sliding off of it by accident. Peter ran at Tony, who looked frightened for his life, the small human barreling towards him with a speed unmatched.

The pair stumbled when the boy launched himself at Tony's legs, clinging to them in a hug with a wide smile plastered on his face. Pete's cheeks were rosy red in excitement, and for a moment, Steve allowed himself to enjoy the child's happiness. However, he quickly reminded himself why they were there in the first place, and changed his focus to Tony.

The man in question had gone pale, lips a thin line of obvious discomfort. It was the same expression Tony had in the library when Peter had kissed the Arc Reactor. He had thought it had been because of the mental scars the the device in his chest carried. But it was now obvious to Cap that this expression had nothing to do with the reactor, and everything to do with Peter.

"Hey Pete? Let's let go of of him, okay? Mr. Iron Man doesn't want to be hugged right now," Steve informed the boy.

Peter reluctantly let go of Tony, pouting while looking at Steve as if the good Captain had done the child wrong.

Steve had expected that the genius would have relaxed after the kid relinquished his grip on his legs. Maybe it was physical contact? Peter did tend to spring up on people, enjoying the act of giving out surprise hugs. But Tony had never been one for jump scares, and maybe the physical contact made the experience uncomfortable for him. And yet, when Peter pulled away, instead to be distracted with the shiny and interesting workshop, Tony still stood stalk still, pale and tense.

Now Steve was really stumped, because if it wasn't the Arc Reactor, and it wasn't the physical contact, then it had to be something mental. Of course, they all had their fair share of mental scars and inhibitors, but being afraid of a small child? Steve couldn't wrap his head around what the problem was. Because as far as he knew, Tony had never had a traumatic experience of a kid attacking him, and it sounded really unlikely that would have happened. There was a reason, but Steve didn't even know where to begin.

Tony must have seen something in Cap's blue eyes, because he looked down at Peter with a grim expression, "Hey Pete, why don't you go play with DUM-E over there. He loves meeting new people," the man pointed over to the robot, who chirped at his name. The boy giggled with brimming joy, running at DUM-E who was now scooting around in circles, happy to have a new playmate.

Now left alone to talk, the two men looked at each other, the silence settling heavy between the two of them.

"Tony. We need to talk," Steve said, trying to make eye contact with the brown eyed man, who looked down at his shoes, observing something that was not there in false interest. All he got in response was a hum, and there he went again, chewing at his bottom lip until it was red.

Cap tried again, "There's something off. And I don't know why you're being silent about it. You obviously aren't okay with Pete, and-"

"I'm okay with Peter!" Tony protested, head snapping up to look him dead in the eye, "Peter isn't the problem."

Steve raised an eyebrow at this, crossing his arms as he always did when Tony told lies, "Well something is, because ever since Peter came to the tower, you've ceased to exist."

Tony opened his mouth as if to retort, and Steve could almost heard the inevitable 'no I haven't', but then the man closed his mouth, realizing it was no use arguing with Captain Rogers.

"Listen, I'm just- I'm not good with kids, okay? They cry and scream, they always want food. They're different than machines, and I just prefer machines," Tony said, waving his arms about in a desperate attempt to make Steve believe him. But no matter how hard Stark tried, he would always avoid eye contact with the person he was lying to. Tony's eyes flickering from one object to another was a dead give away.

"Well that just doesn't make sense. We meet kids all the time out in the field, you love signing their drawings with red crayons. Why is Peter any different?" Steve questioned, taking a step forward and trying to keep his voice calm. The last thing they needed right now was for him to get angry at Tony for keeping his walls up. He took a step backward in response to the Captain's advances, not needing comfort nor closeness in this conversation. Steve made a note not to move forward again, not wanting to do anything to cause Tony to bolt.

"Peter isn't different. Not at all. I'm just not good with kids, Steve, that's all. Just let it go-"

"Let it go? Look, if we're adopting Peter, I need to make sure everyone is on the same page. And right now, we are not on the same page. Pardon my french, but 'not good with kids' is bullcrap, Stark," Steve immediately cursed himself, he was already getting angry. And when he got angry, then Tony would, and they would soon ping off each other until it became a screaming match.

"Well I'm sorry, _Rogers,_ that my answer doesn't meet your satisfaction-"

"Is it a problem with being responsible for kids? Because Peter is responsibility and all the kids you gave autographs to weren't. That's a mighty fine difference."

"Captain, I really don't need to have this discussion right now, I was working on-"

"Excuse me if I don't care what you were using as an excuse to mope down here-"

" _I don't mope!"_ Stark quickly protested.

"-but we need to figure this out because we have to raise a _child, as a team_ , and for the life of me I can't figure out why you have such a problem with this!"

Tony's face was beginning to get red as the anger rose within him, and somewhere deep in his mind, Steve tried to remind himself that getting frustrated was not helping anyone. But he was too far gone to care.

"I _never_ agreed to raise a goddamn child, _Rogers._ "

"Oh is that your problem? Parenting a ki-"

"I am _NOT_ gonna be parenting, don't you dare say that!"

Steve wanted to scream, why did Tony Stark always bring out the worst in him? Cap gritted his teeth to stifle the rising scream, instead he managed to seeth through his teeth, "What is your problem, Tony? You've never been bad with kids, and you insist that you are because you can't handle the duty of being a co-parent!"

" _I am NOT going to be PARENTING!_ " and dear Lord Tony was starting to get loud, but Steve didn't honestly care anymore. He had forgotten that Peter was in the room, Tony's screams zeroing the whole universe in on him as they always did.

"Just do what Howard did, _Tony_! You seem to think you're all that, _something_ must have gone right, so just _follow by example_!" Steve roared, fist now clenched at his sides, fingernails biting painfully into his palms.

It was obvious that, in that moment, a line was crossed. Because Tony's angry red turned to a sickly pale green, eyes widening at the mention of Stark Senior.

"R-Rogers, I can't- Howard was a drunk-" Tony suddenly sounded like he was pleading, and Cap really should have reeled it in, should have noticed that the man was needing the fight to stop immediately. He should have realized that he was suddenly in very dangerous territory. But he would go to hell before doing so, because Tony Stark was always able to rile him up and make him say things that were mean and biting, and this time was no exception.

"He was an alcoholic? Well, look at that _Stark_ , already following in your Dad's footsteps and you didn't even mean to!"

And oh no, Tony looked about ready to puke, the man's eyes were glassy with unshed tears. There was a sound of a faint rip as the shirt hem that Tony had been anxiously fiddling with tore at Steve's words. Cap really needed to stop.

"Cap, please," Tony tried, but the blood pulsing in Steve's ears was too loud, too deafening to focus on the shorter man a few long steps away.

"Did Howard also teach you how to be an asshole? Because I doubt it. You keep yourself so high up that pedestal, and you can't face a child that wants a hug?"

Tears streamed down Tony's face as the man finally broke, screaming as he had never screamed before, " _Fuck you, Rogers! So what if I'm drunk? So what if I'm an asshole? AT LEAST I DON'T BEAT UP CHILDREN! God, you think you knew him so well, thought he was a fucking angel, didn't you? Well I'm SORRY I don't want to be like dear old Daddy, but I don't think Peter would look very attractive WITH A FUCKING BLACK EYE THE SIZE OF MY FIST!"_

Everything stopped at that moment. Everything froze. Steve felt like he was under the ice again, cold and shocked and useless. Useless as tears slid down oil-streaked cheeks. Useless as he realized that his friend had been a horrible, horrible father. Useless.

Tony's eyes were wide, and he knew the man was regretting everything he had just told Steve. But there was no going back now, and the waterworks were open, and damn it, why did they always do this to each other?

"He worshipped you, you know. Never stopped looking for you…."

Steve's mouth wasn't working, but even if it was he didn't know what he would have said. Tony continued on, now looking at the torn hem of his shirt. His voice was much quieter now, as if he had scared himself with his outburst.

"Howard only taught me how to fight. He didn't teach me how to love a kid. He didn't teach me how to love anyone. He taught me how to love things that didn't have feelings. Things that can't hurt you. I made DUM-E when I was twelve. I learned to love machines. Because that's how Howard taught me to parent. Which is, to not parent at all…"

Tony looked down at his shoes and hastily detached his fingers from the hem of his shirt, using the backs of his hands to wipe away the wet, salty trails on his cheeks. He sniffled as his arms fell to his sides, and he finally looked up at the super soldier once more. Tony's brown eyes were bloodshot, glassy from tears, and Steve was suddenly able to move again.

They'd never hugged before. There was some handshakes passed between them throughout the years, yes. And there had been a side hug once; although that one hadn't really counted, because carrying a bleeding Tony off the battlefield, supporting him as he limped, wasn't actually a hug. So why Steve felt the need to hug the shorter man was beyond him. It probably had something to do with how broken the man looked, as if he had been keeping the weight of the world in his heart. And now, Steve was simply seeing what Tony felt every single time parents or kids or families were mentioned. It made sense, the need to be as far away from Peter as the genius could get. He now understood the clench in Tony's jaw that came with every story Steve told of the late Howard Stark.

Tony had been keeping this all in, all to himself. Every cell in his enhanced body told him to hug Tony, to comfort the man who was drying his tears a few feet away. He could easily push him off, sure, and Cap would feel the slight sting of rejection. But taking the risk to comfort his teammate, dare he say friend, far outweighed the danger of Tony's possible reaction.

He took three, cautious steps to the genius, arms hesitantly outstretched in an invitation; asking permission. Steve expected Tony to shy away, to turn around and ask him to leave. Which Steve would have done, because looking back on what he had said, he felt mortified. He felt like he had broken the world in two, and this hurt so much worse than it had when he had been alone in Wakanda.

Tony locked gazes with Steve, and when the mechanic didn't turn away, Steve closed the distance between them, gently wrapping his arms around the shorter man.

The hug was stiff, at first. Tony didn't know where to put his arms or face, and Cap didn't know where to place his overly large hands. Elbows poked ribs, Steve's chin collided with Tony's head, and toes were stepped on. But then one of them moved, an arm slotted into the right place, and they suddenly fit like those ten cent puzzles. Warm, soft, and caring. This was so new for them, because their fights usually ended with someone leaving the other alone. But this was new, different; this was how Steve wanted their fights to resolve from now on. Because they fit so well. Tony felt so warm, and it was so easy to run a soothing hand up and down the genius's back, easy to run fingers through wavy brown hair. Cap had been missing out on this and he hadn't even known it. For some reason, that's how all things with Tony seemed to go.

"I'm sorry," Cap managed, mumbling into soft brown waves. _Since when did hair smell so good?_

Tony gave a wet sniffle into Steve's left peck, the super soldier honestly not caring if the man was leaving a tear stain or not.

"I shouldn't have said the things I said," he continued, "It was wrong of me. You are right to be upset, I completely lost my temper… Gosh, Tony, why didn't you tell me sooner?"

Tony pressed his face harder into Steve's shirt, as if he wanted to become part of the fabric. Peter and Stark were sometimes eerily alike.

"I dunno. Not something one normally brings up," the genius muttered, words muffled by their embrace. Tony sniffed again, this time accompanied by a shaky, steadying sigh. The Captain liked to think the comfort was helping the man, running his hand up and down his back, chin resting lightly on his head.

"Howard was a dick," Steve grumbled, a slight bout of anger snaring in his stomach. He felt betrayed, _devastated_ , because his friend had abandoned his own son to look for Steve, "You deserved so much better than that. You know that, right? And," Steve swallowed around the word, feeling sick for even having to say it, "a-abuse is not something to mess around with. I'm saying this all wrong of course. I guess I just want you to know that I care. And if you want to, I can help teach you how to take care of Peter. Or anything else. I just want to help."

Steve received a wet snort at this, as though it was funny, and Cap was confused until Tony mumbled into his chest, "You said dick."

Steve huffed as relief spread through him, rolling his eyes fondly, "Of course that's what you took away from that."

Tony tightened the embrace for a few seconds before pulling away, cheeks slightly flushed as he emerged from the comfort of Steve's arms, "So you aren't angry?"

Steve blinked at Tony incredulously, "Angry? Why in the world would I be angry?

"I don't know, maybe because I ruined the memory of your good friend? You always seemed to enjoy telling stories about him. I thought maybe you wouldn't want to hear it," Tony explained, looking up into Cap's blues. The super soldier raised an eyebrow at the mechanic, "Okay, don't give me that look, I guess it was a little stupid."

Tony flinched as large, calloused hands gripped his shoulders. Blues bore into warm browns, Steve commanding all of his attention, "I'm not the least bit angry. Sometimes, I may get carried away with stories from the past, I won't deny it. But now is more important than then. And Howard Stark was then. You're now. I prefer now."

Steve was surprised to see a red tint flush on Tony's cheeks as the man smiled, watching it slightly darken the man's tan skin. He tried to catch his breath, because there was suddenly something about Tony he felt he was missing, but desperately needed to catch. Something so familiar, and if he stared a little bit longer, maybe he'd recognize it…

"Are you done fighting now?"

The two men jumped apart, looking over at the five year old whose hands were behind his back.

Steve felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. Had Peter just watched them scream? Oh, he had been such an idiot, bringing the boy and then proceeding to forget the child was in their presence, instead focusing on yelling and cursing.

"DUM-E escorted young Sir into the hall upon my orders. I thought it might be the best course of action," JARVIS explained, as if he had read Steve's mind, hearing the stream of concern.

Cap thanked the ceiling as Peter ran up to them, jumping up and down with excitement, "We played chase! I won!" DUM-E chirped happily, raising it's one metal arm up and waving it about, as if celebrating. Tony chuckled, and to Steve's surprise, crouched down to Peter's level. He held out his arms slightly, tentatively, as if not sure asking for a hug was necessarily what he wanted.. The small boy immediately backed up, glancing frantically at Cap.

"Mister Steve said you didn't want hugs, Mister Iron Man," Peter warned, the five year old furrowing his brow and frowning, lower lip jutting out in a pout. Steve's gaze fell to Tony, who opened his arms a little wider, an unsure smile gracing his lips.

"One small hug might not hurt right now, yeah?" Tony told the boy, waver obvious in his voice, but at least Tony wasn't trying to act tough or hide the fact that this made him nervous.

The boy rocked on his heels for a few seconds, looking from the super soldier to his idol, trying to figure out if he really could hug Tony. Peter must have decided Stark was telling the truth, because in the next moment, the boy was in Tony's arms, laughing and throwing his little arms around the man's neck.

The genius tensed, but he hugged back anyway, allowing slightly shaking hands to hold the overjoyed child. A smile spread across Tony's face as Pete giggled, and the man looked up at the super soldier above them, smile reaching his brown eyes for the first time in a while.

Steve's breath suddenly caught in his throat, watching brown eyes glisten with happiness, gold and dark reds highlighted by his wide smile. Warm, welcoming, beautiful; not quite Peggy's shade, something particular and familiar.

Happiness looked good on Tony Stark.


	4. Bathtubs and Parenting

Tony was at a loss for words. An unusual phenomenon, something Pepper had always vehemently insisted did not exist. A speechless Tony Stark? Impossible. Yet there he sat, staring at the holographic screens, his tongue light and lying awkwardly in his mouth without the weight of words sitting on it.

And if Pepper knew this state of shock was caused by a hug from both Captain America and a five year old, she would have never let the genius forget it. It was moments like these that Tony was glad they weren't together anymore, because Pepper would forever have held that over his head.

It had been so sudden. One second Tony had been fuming, screaming about all things wrong with his childhood, and the next Captain Rogers was enveloping him in one of the warmest hugs he had ever had. Not like Pepper's hugs, which were subtly warm, soft limbs lightly resting against his body and small hands splaying against his shoulder blades. No, Ste- _Rogers'_ hugs were a damning warmth, burying him in such a comforting heat that it was hard to believe the man had lived in ice for seventy years.

And it had been so surprising, because Tony had been _sure_ Cap would have responded negatively to a confession on horrid childhoods. The genius had spent hours thinking on this, imagining what words the Captain would have for him. Imaginary-Cap usually spit back something about Tony being weak, or Howard being a great father, sometimes sprinkling in painful comments about never living up to his father's shadow. However, never in any of his fantasies did he imagine that that good Captain would sympathize, let alone hug him.

It had been one of Tony's first hugs since breaking up with Pepper; definitely his first hug after the Civil War, and he immediately knew all future hugging experiences were now ruined. Nothing would ever come close to the hugs Steve Rogers delivered. It was like a huge band-aid, binding his many wounds and promising healing with time. Tony didn't believe in magic, avoided it at all costs; scoffed at the concept as if it were stale gum stuck to his shoe. But in that moment, with drying tears on his cheeks and throat raw from screaming, Steve's arms felt like magic.

Tony cursed himself once more, the name "Steve" rolling by too easily, too slippery to grasp and stop before completing its thought. He had been trying, really trying, because he did not need his crush on the good Captain. He had never needed to be crushing on the man to begin with, but now he really needed it to stop because if Steve started hugging Tony on the regular, he would be doomed. Might as well take himself out of the Avengers, because he was now a puddle of warmth, and Stark men did not become puddles of warmth.

And then there had been Peter, giggling as if his birthday had come early, his first present being a hug from "Mr. Iron Man." Tony hadn't been able to stop the smile from forming on his face, despite his weak heart nervously palpitating underneath small hands. Eventually, he pulled away from the hug, smile weak as the child looked at him in wonder. It was a small victory of course, something so trivial to be happy about, and yet Tony hadn't been able to stop the swell of joy that had filled his chest. Tony Stark had just hugged a child and hadn't hurt them. There could be some physical contact that didn't involve pain; Tony could make a small human happy. He could pretend all he wanted, could tell himself that it was weak to be so happy about something so small, but Peter liked Tony and damn it if he wasn't over the moon with it all.

As he replayed the scene over and over in his mind, the weight on his shoulders feeling lighter than it had in a little while, he started a new design for a mini Iron Man suit. Designed to fly around a child's room, eminitating a calm hum to help the boy fall fast asleep.

Peter had loved the gift, squealing with joy a night later when he entered his room to find Iron Man flying around and around, following the perimeter of the boy's ceiling. Cap had been just as surprised to see the toy, based on the soft chuckle Tony strained to pick up on from his hiding spot around the corner.

"Mr. Iron Man is here to protect me, Mr. Steve! He's gonna make the monsters go away!" Peter had exclaimed, a soft thumping sound indicating that the small boy was now jumping around in unadulterated joy. This was soon followed by a tired sigh from the Captain, who had just been able to get Pete to settle down with a glass of warm milk.

Tony had then left his hiding spot, walking away and down the hall, stupid grin stretching across his lips as yelps of excitement faded away. And although Peter had been tired and grumpy the next day, having stayed up too late in his uncontrollable joy the night before, Tony Stark regretted nothing.

And from there everything was suddenly turning up sunshine and daisies. Which should have been the first warning sign that something was coming, because that's how life worked. It went up, down, even sideways sometimes. And everyone knew what goes up must come down, because gravity was as real as Captain America's hero complex, and physics worked not only on physical objects but Tony's happiness as well. Realistically, he should have learned his lesson the first twenty times he was surprised when his happiness didn't last indefinitely. Something would always happen. Good things were always followed by not so good things, and for some reason Tony only remembered this fact _after_ the not so good thing happened.

The second warning sign had occurred a couple of days after the Captain's hug, when Doombots were once again sighted terrorizing the unfortunate city of New York. The team went into panic, all looking down at the child in their possession, none of them quite sure what to do.

Bruce had quickly volunteered himself to stay and look after Peter, snapping at the team to get a move on before casualties started building. Luckily, they had come home after with barely a scratch, Hulk's absence on the battlefield not having been missed. But the media latched onto it with their conspiracy theories, wondering where the green Avenger had gone. It sat on all of their shoulders, an uncomfortable prickle as the media breathed down their necks. Of course, no one was bothered by the media itself; they had dealt with the pressure before. It was the threat of uncovering what the Avengers were hiding that had the team on high alert. Because keeping Peter a secret was high priority, and a leak was much worse than an announcement at a PR conference.

Tony ate breakfast with Pete the next morning, distracting the child as Cap talked on the phone with Fury about the morning's headlines. Fury was scolding the Captain about taking the Hulk off the field and not thinking about the media fire, if the loud shouts from the other end were anything to go by. Which honestly didn't make much sense to Tony because wasn't SHIELD dismantled?

Rogers stomped off after the call ended, grumbling about "gym" and "could you take care of Peter for a while", so that's how Tony Stark ended up spending a good chunk of his time putting puzzles together with Peter Parker, praying to a god he still didn't believe in that the child would stay entertained. Once Cap had come back from his workout, less tense and slightly more relaxed, Tony had all but shoved Peter back into the Captain's care. That was the day they realized Tony had a limited amount of time he could take care of the child before anxiety and panic settled deep in his bones once more. Luckily, Tony had been able to keep it together until he reached his workshop, but the team made sure to keep his "Peter exposure" at a comfortable level from there, on.

Despite these few mishaps, life in the tower was happy. Tony was oblivious to the warning signs as he always was, and he was hitting an all time high with his personal inventing and production rates in the workshop.

Then Clint left the tower. Tony knew it was probably because Peter was making the archer homesick, and although he was good with the kid, Clint probably wanted to be around his own kids more. Which Tony understood. And they didn't need Clint around at the moment. Crime was low and the bad guys that did show up were outrageously manageable.

Barton had slightly dragged his feet on the way out, not used to the team exuberantly reassuring him that he was not needed. He voiced his suspicions that the team didn't want him with the way they were almost asking him to leave. But he was soon out of the tower, and their human count was down to five.

As Clint left in his taxi, Tony felt a very small flutter of something not quite like fear in his chest. Like the first rain drop of a forecasted hurricane, or possibly akin to the feeling before going down the hill of an outrageously tall roller coaster. He had ignored it however, chalking it up to some odd sort of separation anxiety, which he didn't even question because what was one more issue on his already long list?

It was a little quieter without Clint crawling around in the vents or placing the coffee grounds where Tony couldn't reach. But the team had been separated before, and it wasn't actually new to them, despite feeling that way after living with each other for a few months.

Everything was okay though. They could deal with one less adult; some people with kids only had themselves to babysit. So the remaining Avengers could deal with one less person in their parental unit of four, right?

At least this is what Tony told himself until Bruce stopped by the communal living room, hastily packed duffle bag slung over his shoulder, announcing that he "got a call from a girl and had to go to some university." Of course, this wasn't exactly what the scientist said, but Tony hadn't been actually listening until he realized what the words meant.

Doctor Banner gave quick goodbyes to them each, asked Tony to look after a colony of bacteria he was cultivating in his lab, and then Bruce was gone.

The adult count was down to three, and Tony Stark was starting to panic.

The feeling of doom was lumping in the billionaire's throat, quiet yet undeniably there. Tony could no longer pull off genuine smiles, his lips now only able to form weary grimaces. And he couldn't place what was making him feel so afraid. But what goes up must come down, and he was sure something was about to come down hard.

This was always the worst part during the impending catastrophe, when the doom was setting in and he _knew_ something was about to happen but he had no fucking clue what was about to hit. It was like knowing the was a warning that some weather was coming, but all the weather forecasters had died, so no one knew if there was a light rain shower or a goddamn meteor coming their way.

Tony should have known it was going to be the goddamn meteor.

It was take-away night, and Peter had chosen pizza, to the surprise of literally nobody. Tony had once said the boy ate pizza like an opioid addict popped pills, an analogy that had Cap sporting a disapproving frown and Clint snorting into his pepperoni pizza. The analogy was painfully accurate however, no matter how much Cap disapproved of it. They ate pizza at least two times a week because Peter insisted. Tony would have stopped it by now if the child didn't get so damn happy when the pizza man arrived, treating the acne ridden, most likely high-as-a-kite teen as if they were the second coming of Jesus or David Bowie.

So, consequently, that night found the small group around the unusually empty dining table, eating pizza and conversing about their days. It was almost enough to help Tony ignore the doom lump in his airway, pretending that the metaphorical meteor that was undoubtedly on a coarse straight to their living room was, in fact, not coming. This fake ignorance only lasted for a few moments, however, until Natasha's phone rang, vibrating in her pocket.

Conversation halted immediately around the table as she whipped the phone out, pressing the green call button and answering with a stern, "Agent Romanoff."

There was a deep rumble on the other side of the line, and Tony immediately knew that a Fury-sized meteor had just interrupted their dinner. And honestly, Tony should have guessed the goddamn meteor was Nick Fury, of course it was that man's assassin's face went stony and her lips pressed into a thin line as she got her orders, green eyes turning dark and serious.

It was a jerky conversation, full of stops and fast-spoken words, and before Tony knew it, Nat was already hanging up.

"It's a mission. Clint's not here, so Fury's calling you in with me, Steve," Natasha announced as she got out of her chair quickly, leaving her food behind as she rushed off to her room, presumably to get her suit and gadgets. Captain Rogers cursed under his breath as he rocketed out of his chair, eyes landing on Peter and then Tony, both looking up at him with fear in their eyes, both for different reasons.

"Where are you going? Don't leave! It's pizza night!" Peter protested, slamming his fist down on the table as he had probably seen Tony himself do a couple of times. It would have been funny, small hands curled in angry fists, if Tony wasn't focused on what this meant for him.

Steve's blues seemed full of conflict and regret as he leaned in to Pete, brushing his brown hair aside and planting a rushed kiss against the kid's forehead, "I know, I'm sorry, but I have to go, sweetie. I'll eat as much pizza as you want when I get back."

The genius was taken aback for a second at the blatant display of care, and he would have stayed shocked for a longer period of time if he wasn't in the position he was in now.

"Rogers. Don't," Tony croaked, voice cracking as he clenched his teeth. There was no use in telling Cap "don't", but this wasn't fair and the super soldier knew it.

"Tony, I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do," Rogers addressed quickly, sprinting down the hall towards the stairs, and there was no fucking way he was going to let the good Captain go so easily.

Tony shot out of his seat at the dining room and chased after the man, ignoring Peter's cries of protest at being left alone.

"You can _not_ do this to me Rogers, I swear-" Tony began, yelling after the Captain, who was taking three steps at a time up to his floor. The genius followed as quick as he could, not having as long legs as the other man did.

"If I didn't have to, I wouldn't. But it's only Nat and I right now, and we discussed that if some of us were called in on a mission, the last avenger standing would look after Pete," Rogers explained, the pair finally reaching the man's floor. They made a beeline for Cap's room, where the super soldier began throwing together a pile of clothes, haphazardly adding his suit and shield to the mix.

"Yeah, but I never thought _I_ was going to be the one left alone to take care of him! I can't do this Rogers, I just can't-" Tony was freaking out now, waving his hands about in wide gestures, trying to convey to the Captain that his distress was much more important than any mission the man could be assigned.

"Yes, you can. Peter loves you!" Cap exclaimed as he dug out his duffle bag, stuffing his pile of clothes in it without caring to fold them, "You're great at co-paren-"

"Don't you dare say parenting Rogers, I swear to god!"

"You aren't Howard-"

"I am aware I am not Howard! I am Tony, and Tony is deathly afraid of taking care of a five year old by himself!" Tony spat back, arms folding aggressively across his chest, nails digging painfully into his arms in attempt to ground himself against the rising panic.

Cap huffed, bowing his head and closing his eyes, hand pausing at their frantic work. The pause in hectic movement felt like taking a deep breath to Tony, as if the air between them had settled with a simple pause of motion. Even so, his piercing grip on his own arms did not let up.

Rogers looked up from the overflowing duffle bag. Sky blues met chocolate browns, and "Steve" settled on Tony's tongue once more. He wanted to bite the word, kill it with a gnash of his teeth, but it felt too sweet on his taste buds; like a candy he just couldn't bare to resist.

The Captain walked over to him, gently placing large hands on the shorter man's shoulders, "Tony. I know you can do this. Okay? You're stronger than you think."

Those sky blues looked so raw in that moment, the honesty that they conveyed almost blinding to Tony. Cap believed every single word he was saying. He trusted Tony every bit as he did the rest of the team, and there was no doubt in the man's mind that Tony would fail.

It was supposed to be comforting. And it was, to an extent. Hands warm like a furnace, resting gently on his shoulders; eyes Tony could get lost in looking down at him with such ernest. Yet the words were not comforting. They left no room for failure and Tony was all about making mistakes.

But he couldn't make mistakes this time around, because this was a fucking _human_ , not a machine, and Tony was really starting to feel the need to scream because the universe just really fucking hated him sometimes didn't it-

"Tony. Breathe," Cap instructed, gripping the shorter man's shoulder as he did so. An act of grounding, something Rogers had probably learned in some team building youtube tutorial, but it was working wonders.

He inhaled a ginormous gulp of breath, his head going slightly dizzy, before releasing it in one rush, blowing it straight into Cap's face, slightly rustling the blonde hair. Tony's mind quickly supplied him with the tune to "America, the Beautiful", likening Steve's- _damn it_ \- hair to the lyric ' _amber waves of grain'_ , and now he was sufficiently distracted from any approaching panic attack, too busy trying to keep his laughter from bursting out.

"Your breath smells like pizza," Cap reprimanded, taking his hands off of Tony's shoulders with a wrinkle of his nose. Tony snorted at this, stepping back to relieve them of their close proximity to each other.

"You're welcome. I've been told my pizza breath is simply divine," he retorted, grin spreading across his lips as they once more fell into familiar banter. The super soldier offered Tony an exasperated, yet somehow still fond smile, before returning to the duffle bag. He zipped everything up, carrying his shield on one arm and bag in the other, and the pang of anxiety hit Tony once more at the thought that Cap was leaving and he was going to be _alone_ , with a _child_.

The Captain must have seen the panic flit across the mechanic's face as they walked out of the room, closing the door behind them, "I'll be gone for a week at most. I'm sure if you give Bruce a call he'll come back early to help you out."

Tony attempted to reign in his frown at these words, following briskly behind Cap as they walked down the stairs to the communal floor, where Natasha would most likely be waiting. He did not want to call Bruce. He shouldn't have to, because 'Stark men are made of iron' and surely Tony was stronger than to be bested by a five year old.

And anyway, he was highly suspicious that Bruce was getting laid by whoever had summoned him. Tony was not about to cockblock the doctor from some well-deserved stress relief with his inability to take care of small children.

"Got everything?" Natasha asked the Captain, who nodded quickly. They both gave Peter a goodbye peck on the cheek, Rogers gave some last few encouraging words for , and then they were gone.

" _You can do this, Tony. All he needs tonight is a bath and sleep,"_ Cap's words echoed loudly in his skull, bouncing off of each other in an intimidating fashion. The man's words had implied that 'bath and sleep' shouldn't be too hard to accomplish. And Tony had never heard screams coming from the bathroom when Cap corralled the boy in for his bathtime, so it was plausible that Tony could do this. Peter wasn't a bad child after all, how hard could this be?

"Um, Peter? Are you ready for bathtime?" Tony asked, wringing his hands while watching the child cautiously. Peter was sat on the carpeted living room floor, playing with his many superhero figures. The mechanic tried to ignore the fact that Pete had placed Iron Man and Captain America on the same team. The plastic superheros were fighting side by side against Mr. Incredible and a totally-not-to-scale Scooby Doo, who for some reason was taller than the Iron Man figurine. Tony didn't have to check to know that many kids with Tony and Cap figurines didn't have them fighting on the same team as of late.

"No. I wanna keep playing," Peter replied, and damn it, Pete never said 'no' to Cap when he asked. Tony was being conned, he knew it, the child was a manipulative little bastard.

"Okay then. When will you be done playing?" Tony questioned, eyes flitting from the child on the floor to the clock on the wall that read 8:36.

Peter paused his playing, looking off into the distance with a very Cap-esque concentration. The boy nodded to himself as if resolving an internal conversation, eyebrows furrowed in determination, before turning back to his toys, "Twelve o'clock."

Tony stifled a groan. No, this was not good at all. And he just _knew_ that if Cap was there, Pete would be all but frolicking to the bathroom, giggling and having a grand old time with the star spangled man. He concentrated on slowly exhaling, grounding himself best he could, before delving into the horrors of responsibility.

"Pete, we uh, we can't stay up till' midnight, okay? That's way past bedtime," Tony attempted. Peter looked up from his toys, brown eyes falling on the man with innocent curiosity.

"No it's not. Mr. Steve says you don't go to bed until two sometimes," and damn it, the kid had pulled the 'you don't do it so why should I' card. The worst card of them all, and Peter had thrown it out on the table in their first argument. Fucking hell, this was going to be a long week.

"Yes, but I'm an adult and it's my job," he retorted, Pete's eyes narrowing as the genius used the dreaded 'you aren't old enough' excuse, "And, um, if you don't go to bed on time, then Iron Man is going to be sad."

Peter dropped his figurines at that, looking genuinely concerned for the Iron Man flying around his room, "Why would Iron Man be sad?"

Tony's mind wildly scrambled to find an answer, which should have been easy because he was a genius. He had made a new element while dying. He could find a convincing argument for a five year old child.

"He'd be sad because he… He wouldn't have anyone to protect at night, and that's the only thing he's wanted for, so he'd be sad," and ' _shit Stark cool it with the self-deprecation'_ he tried to tell himself, cringing inwardly at his words. However, Peter did not pay attention to that part of Tony's message, focusing instead on the fact that he was letting his favorite superhero down.

The boy leapt up from his position on the carpeted ground, eyes wide with worry at the thought that Iron Man would be sad. Tony couldn't help the sharp twist of something unforgivingly sweet, originating somewhere underneath his ribcage. It made him smile, and the sensation only spread as Peter all but threw his toys into his toy bin, cleaning up after himself as quickly as possible before dashing to the bathroom.

Tony followed behind him, grinning like a stupid idiot. This was, dare he say, slightly enjoyable? Cap was right, he had this in the bag.

And then he stepped into the bathroom, smile slipping from his face, recalling what bathtime entailed. Peter was sat on the bath mat, waiting for Tony to help him get ready.

"Right. Okay. We can do this, right?" Tony assured himself, sighing deeply as he crouched down to where Pete sat. The boy nodded and wiggled a sock-covered foot at him, gesturing for him to take it off.

Tony gently began to help Peter undress, rolling his socks off with the utmost care. His ankles were so small, so thin, and Tony could cover the child's foot with one hand. If he wasn't careful, he could accidentally snap any bone in the small boy's body; that scared the shit out of him more than anything ever had. And the "things that scared the shit out of him" list was incredibly long, so he was respectively freaked.

When Peter was down to his underwear, Tony went over to the bath, turning the spout on and testing the temperature, "Buddy, how hot does Mr. Steve usually make your bath?"

Silence followed, causing Tony to look from the bath to the boy standing behind him. Peter shrugged in answer, and that really wasn't helpful. He could have asked the kid to put his hand under the water to test it, but what if warm to Tony was boiling to Peter, and the small hand was burned off in the process? Yes it didn't make any logical sense, Pete's hands could not be burned off by bath water, but Tony wasn't about to take any chances. Crazier things had happened in the tower before.

"Well, alright. I'll make it just shy of boner killer and not too close to lava, yeah?" Tony chuckled, speaking to himself again, and for some reason he was surprised when Peter answered. He had not meant for Pete to hear him, his mind for some reason assuming the boy could only hear him when he wanted to be heard. It was safe to say Tony had been hanging around robots for too long.

"What's a boner, Mr. Iron Man?" Peter asked as Tony finally let the water begin to fill the bath.

He choked on an inhale, the need to laugh and the need to reprimand himself fighting for air. The five year old watched on in concern, and the mechanic just _knew_ Cap was going to kill him once this week was over.

"It's nothing, it's nothing, Mr. Iron Man just likes to be a little silly sometimes," Tony explained. Peter seemed satisfied enough with this answer, nodding thoughtfully as he watched the bath fill with water.

They both sat in silence, watching until the bath was ready before pulling off Pete's Hulk themed underwear. He squealed when Tony dipped him in the bath, writhing in his arms with enough gusto to make the genius weary of an accidental punch to the nose.

"What? What'd I do?" Tony questioned, hastily pulling Pete out of the bath water and setting him back on the fuzzy bath mat.

"Too hot! Too hot!" Peter insisted, stomping his feet on the mat as if trying to set out a fire. Tony groaned. The water had been fine, he swore. But apparently it hadn't been cold enough, because Peter was now glaring at Tony as if every wrong thing with the world was because of him. He took a deep breath, settling the slight frustration that quietly lay deep in his stomach. It was so subtle, it almost felt like a leftover genetic reaction from Howard Stark. Lovely.

"I'm sorry buddy, I'm sorry, too close to lava? I'm sorry, let's try again," Tony profusely apologized, feeling a slight bit of pride in his response. Howard would have screamed at Peter, telling him that he just had to deal with the scalding hot water. He would never let anyone treat Pete like that, ever.

The too-hot bath water went down the drain, Tony trying yet again once all remains of the offending water had disappeared. This time, he let the bath fill with a much colder water, and it actually made a little bit of sense that Rogers would draw cold water for baths. Ever since the ice, he had always been a slight bit more sensitive to hot temperatures. Of course, that never stopped Cap from going on his morning runs in 90 degree weather. But with small things, such as preparing a bath for a child, he would adjust things to his own sense of temperature without even thinking.

"Okay Peter, let's try this again. Boner killer water might be up your alley," Tony announced, helping him back into the bath once more. This time, the boy didn't squirm or shout in discomfort, so he knew he must have done something right.

Peter settled into the bath with a satisfied smile on his face, and Tony let out a breath without even realizing he had been holding it. He had passed the first step, _finally_ , and although he knew Cap would have done it much quicker, for a first time, he didn't think he had done all that bad.

"Boner water is good," Peter agreed, nodding and patting his hands against the surface of the water, watching the ripples with content. Hell, Cap was really going to kill Tony when he got back, but at least it felt so worth it in the moment.

Tony gently wet Pete's hair while he tried to contain his laughter, filling the red solo cup perched on the bathtub ledge with water. Peter instructed the genius to keep a hand at the boy's hairline to make sure no water got in his eyes. Tony did as best he could, and considering the lack of shrieks coming from Peter, he fancied himself doing a good job.

After his hair was sufficiently wet, Tony grabbed hold of the "no-tears" shampoo, ready to sue the shampoo company if he saw any sign of salty water in the boy's eyes. Peter eyed the bottle in Tony's grasp skeptically, uncertain eyes drifting up to look at the man.

When Pete opened his mouth, Tony expected him to say something along the lines of 'are you sure you know what to do with that' or just plainly 'I don't trust you'. Instead, Peter asked, "Why does Mr. Steve call you Tony?"

It took a few seconds to recover from being caught off guard before Tony could process the question. As he thought on how to answer that, he squirted a bit of the shampoo into his hands, rubbing it together in his hands. Reaching for Peter's head once more, and ever so gently scrubbing it in the brown locks, he answered, "I guess because it's my name."

' _Wow Tony, what a lame answer'_ he told himself, but Peter nodded as if this was a perfectly, well explained reason. His eyebrows, however, were still pulled down in confusion.

"But your name is Iron Man," he argued, head following loseley along with Tony's hands, and the man wished that Pete would hold his head steadier because it looked like it was about to just roll off his body.

"Well, when I wear the suit, I'm Iron Man. But my real name is Tony?" and it ended like a question because what if the only reason Peter tolerated him was because he thought he was only Iron Man? Maybe Tony should have just said that he was Iron Man and had no idea why Cap called him that. Had he just screwed this up?

But of course, he was only overthinking the situation, as he did most of the time when it involved Peter.

"I'll call you Mr. Tony then," Peter declared. Tony's hands paused in the boy's hair as a spike of pure joy rocketed through his heart. For something such as a name, something that really shouldn't matter, he was over the moon. Being Peter's favorite hero no longer included just the suit, but now also included the man who wore the suit. And he was sure it didn't mean anything, being called Mr. Tony, but it felt like everything to him.

"Thanks Pete," he croaked, pulling his hands out of Peter's hair and reaching for the water cup, which had been left to lazily float along in the water. He was carefully washing out the suds, holding his hand to Peter's hairline as instructed, when the boy asked yet another question.

"Why don't you call him Steve?"

Tony fumbled with the plastic cup, accidently dropping it into the bathtub with a splash. Peter apparently found this hilarious, because he laughed like a maniac, patting his hands on the water's surface over and over as if he were playing patty cake with the liquid.

Was it that obvious that he avoided calling Cap by his first name? Peter had only been around for a little while. If the child had realized by now, the rest of the Avengers must have known for ages. Oh god, what did they think? Did they know why? Did _Cap_ know?

Peter's splashing continued as Tony was left to his inner frantic thinking, the splash radius growing with each pat, until the bath water was soon flying over the edge. He was about to tell him to stop it, that bath water was meant to stay in the bathtub, when Peter stopped abruptly with a screech.

"Mr. Tony! My eyes!" the boy shrieked. All of the violent splashing had caused the sudsy water to hit Peter's poor face, irritating his eyes with an uncomfortable sting.

Tony forgot all about Cap in that moment, instead focused on horrid images of Peter going blind from the soapy water, or possibly even dying. If Rogers didn't kill him for the 'boner water', it would be for Pete's loss of eyesight.

"Shit! Shit!" he chanted, hands flailing for the boy's alien themed towel. As soon as he got his hands on it, he quickly brought it to Peter's face, rubbing at his eyes with a frenzied concern. Of course, leave it up to him to fucking _blind_ the kid after Captain America himself said he had not a shred of doubt in his abilities.

Once the whimpering stopped, he took the towel away from the boy's eyes, "Can you see?" Tony asked, swearing on his mother's grave that he would never forgive himself if the child went blind. It hadn't even been his fault, Peter had been the one to insist on playing with the water. But Tony felt immensely guilty, as if every accomplishment in his life didn't matter when Peter was in pain.

Peter's eyelashes fluttered against his small cheeks as he hesitantly opened his eyes. Big brown eyes locked on to worry-filled ones, and Tony had never felt so relieved in his life, "I'm so sorry buddy, I'm the worst bath giver. Like, the worst of the worst. I should be fired."

He expected Peter to agree, to declare that Tony was indeed the worst; a failure because he couldn't even get one freaking bath right. Instead, the boy began giggling, as if the self deprecation was entertaining.

"It's okay, Mr. Tony. Mr. Steve gets water in my eyes all the time when I'm taking a bath," Pete managed between giggles, splashing his hands against the surface of the water again.

"He does?" he found this hard to believe. Cap was goddamn perfect, there was no way the man had ever come close to destroying Pete's vision. The super soldier was the best Dad anyone could ever have, there was no way-

"Yup! But he always lets me get him back," Peter seemed to remember this fact as he said it, because as soon as he finished his sentence, his head snapped up to look at the genius. A mischievous smile began to spread across small lips, innocent eyes glinting with something that should have warned Tony.

But the man was still reeling from the dread of possibly blinding Peter, so nothing could have prepared him for the cup full of water that was thrown right in his face.

Tony sputtered for breath, lungs shrinking tight in an automatic reaction, left over from his days spent in Afghanistan. He gasped, airway deciding to cease all function as his heart rate spiked. He could feel Peter and the bathroom starting to disappear; the white tiles threatening to become dark and desert hot, the bathtub flickering between reality and a large washbucket. The alien towel gripped in Tony's hands felt subtly similar to the cloth restraints the Ten Rings had used on his hands. He swore he could feel the familiar sandy grit under his dirty fingernails.

It would have been so easy to follow these images, to get sucked into them, suffocating in the memories. He almost felt the start of losing himself, body beginning to curl inwards subconsciously, when his gaze fell to the boy in the bathtub.

Peter was smiling as if he had shared the best joke Tony would ever hear. It was a complete, pure joy, one that radiated from Pete and infected the room. He focused on that toothy grin, pulling at his heartstrings like it was trying to tug him away from deserts and dry heat. And, okay, wow, that had never happened before. It hadn't been possible to pull him back from those horrid images, until that moment in the communal bathroom. No matter who was there when it happened, or even when Tony was alone; he had always, _always_ re-lived those days whenever an episode was triggered. There was no fighting it off. His PTSD was as hard to fight as it was to defeat a dragon. And dragons weren't real, so it was damn near impossible.

But somehow dragons were real, and they could be defeated, because the desert and the cave began to recede from the peripheral of Tony's vision until all that was left was the grinning child. And this was really something else, because only moments before, Tony had been so scared. But now, he felt a ball of happiness settle in his chest at the sight of Peter; a sort of happiness he had always associated with Pepper, Rhodey, and more recently, Steve.

As soon as Tony caught his breath, even though his hands still slightly shook, his face broke into a grin, "Oh, you're gonna get it!"

Peter squealed in delight as he was tickled, limbs flailing, sending large waves of water over the bathtub edge. Tony's jeans were absolutely soaked, but he really couldn't give a shit, and only realized the damage after the tickling ceased, as per Peter's strained "No, Mr. Tony, no, stop!"

"Oh god Pete, Mr. Steve is gonna kill us," Tony muttered as he observed the mess they had created. The bathroom was wetter than it had ever been or needed to be, and it was going to be a bitch sopping up with towels.

"No killing!" Peter exclaimed, before falling into another fit of laughter, splashing more water out of the white ceramic tub. Tony couldn't help but chuckling along. Tony attempted to commence the bathing once more, but Peter making a game of it to dash away from the genius. This, of course, got old very quickly, until he gave up on the rest of the bath, settling for the half-washed child.

Tony helped pat the five year old dry as the now-dirty bath water got sucked down the drain. Peter yawned sleepily as the older man towled the brown locks dry, and thank Odin's hairy ball sack that the child was feeling sleepy, because Tony had no idea how the hell he was supposed to get Peter to bed if he was wide awake.

The kid was barley lucid by the time the mechanic had set him in bed. As gently as he could, he covered the boy in his blankets. He smiled as Peter gripped his Iron Man toy closer, and Tony really needed to find a plush Iron Man for him, because plastic armor couldn't be very comfortable to sleep with.

Tony was almost out the door, having turned on the night light and made sure that the Iron Man flying around was fully functional, when a groan of protest came from the bed. He looked over to find wide eyes looking back at him, peeking out from under the covers.

"Mr. Steve always tells me a story before I go to bed," Peter mumbled, voice thick with sleep. The boy seemed to be barely awake, but Tony knew that if he did not tell Pete a story, the boy would not be going to sleep anytime soon.

"Okay, buddy. What stories does Mr. Steve usually tell you?" Tony asked as he sat down on the edge of the bed, near where Pete's feet lay. The boy smiled and snuggled into the blankets, looking outrageously comfortable and cute in his space pajamas. The undeniable surge of affection hit him like a freight train; Tony had never thought it possible to get attached to a kid so quickly. Children were always such a difficult topic for him, but Peter was turning everything the genius knew upside down.

"Mr. Steve always tells me stories about James Buck," Peter said, and it was obvious he liked these stories, because saying the name of the beloved story character made his wide eyes light up. And Tony wanted nothing more in the world than to tell Peter about 'James Buck'. But he had no idea who this was.

"Who?" he asked, wanting to get any details he could out of Peter in order to pull some quick story out of his ass about this character.

"James Buck. Captain America's very best friend," and oh, Tony's heart dropped to his stomach. Bucky. Of course, there was no one better to tell bedtime stories about than Bucky Barnes.

When Cap had moved into the tower, Tony had tried to tell the man that he could bring Bucky along. The troubled soldier had obviously had a rough go of it, and probably didn't have a place he could call home. It was the least Tony could do; maybe even offer an arm tune-up as an apology. But Cap had only shook his head, saying Barnes had chosen to stay in Wakanda for his health.

Tony tried to avoid thinking about Bucky. No, he wasn't angry anymore. The man had been brainwashed, of course he wouldn't have done what he had if his head had been on straight. But thinking of Bucky lead to thinking about Maria Stark in that grainy security photoage, screaming and crying and not understanding what she had done to die in that moment.

"Mr. Tony? Are you sad?" Peter asked, concern heavy in his tone. The boy began to sit up on his bed, sensing something was wrong. Tony reached out and patted the Peter's legs, assuring him that he need not worry.

"Nah, I'm fine," Tony promised, fighting the frown on his face back with a soft smile, "So, James Buck? Well, let me tell you, he was a reckless son of a b- uh, gun…"

And Tony told stories about James Buck. He had heard enough tales from Cap about the man before the Civil War in order to do the storytelling justice. Half way through the story, getting to the part where James was saved by Captain America from the horrible Nazis, he was abruptly interrupted by a snore. Tony stopped in mid-sentence to look down at the child, who was fast asleep, small hands curled around the plastic armored toy.

Smiling to himself, Tony slowly rose off the bed, ducking his head as he stood so as to not collide with the flying Iron Man making laps around the room. He left the door open behind him, just in case Pete yelled for him during the night.

He stifled a yawn as he walked out into the hallway, telling stories of Bucky having made him exhausted as well. A glance at the clock and oh boy, it was way too early for Tony Stark to go to bed. But taking care of a five year old was draining; they had so much energy. And nobody was there to point out that Tony was making a healthy decision, so there was really no reason _not_ to go to bed at the same time the small child did.

As Tony made the guest room bed, situating himself only a few doors down from Peter just in case, he contemplated what it would have been like to have a dad willing to give him baths. A dad willing to feed him his favorite foods, or make him flying toys to zoom around his room, making him feel safe. A dad that would play with him while keeping their anger at bay, or teach him how to use bow and arrow. A dad to dress him up in stars, spangles, and stripes, or a mom to teach him how to cook russian cuisine.

He sighed as he crawled under the sheets. Maybe no one had been there for any of that with him. But he had had someone to read bedtime stories to him. Someone who made sure young Tony ate his vegetables, who had administered band-aids with a loving hand.

"JARVIS?" Tony addressed to the camera he knew was hidden in the corner above his head. If he squinted hard enough, he could make out the swivel of the device, turning to focus on him.

"Yes, Sir?" JARVIS replied, voice soft in the sleepy tower.

"Thank you."

"Whatever for?"

"Well. I mean. It's stupid, you don't have any of Jarvis's memories. You just sound like him and do stuff for me like he did and," Tony paused, taking a deep breath. He was rambling as he always did when he couldn't get the words right, "Well, I just wanted to say thank you. For taking care of me. For being a Dad to me. I wish I could have told you when you weren't an AI. But, well… Damn it I'm rabiling. Just, uh, thanks for reading me bedtime stories."

There was a silence that followed, but the barely-there crackle of static indicated that JARVIS was very much listening, and had not powered down to leave Tony in the quiet.

"You're welcome, Sir," JARVIS replied, and Tony knew it wasn't possible for an AI to get choked up, but he swore he could hear emotions catch in JARVIS's metaphorical throat.

"Dad! _Dad! DAD!"_

Tony rocketed out of bed with a fear-filled heart pounding against the metal casing of the Arc Reactor. Those were Peter's screams, and although he wasn't "Dad", he was still shook to the core by the terror in the child's voice.

" _Pete?"_ Tony called back, voice thick with sleep. Tripping over pants he had left to rest on the floor, he ran out of the guest room in a quick sprint to the room a couple doors down. But Peter wasn't laying in his bed, and the flying Iron Man was nowhere to be seen, " _Peter?!"_

The sound of quick pitter-patter caused Tony to pivot on his feet, watching as the crying five year old emerged from the living room and barreled towards the mechanic. It was a collision course straight for Tony's legs, the miniature Iron Man flying lazily behind him, making sure the small boy was safe. Peter wrapped his arms around Tony's legs as soon as he reached the genius. Small hands grasped his boxers with an iron grip, fragile body shaking with tears. Tony ran a calloused hand through the boy's hair, shushing him and muttering words of comfort while Peter's Iron Man flew above them in slow circles.

Cap hadn't mentioned nightmares, but Peter was paler than the super soldier's fair irish skin, and the poor boy looked like he had seen a ghost.

"Did you have a bad dream?" Tony mumbled to the boy wrapped around his legs. Peter gave a few jerky nods and sniffled.

"Mommy a-and Daddy… They were… The plane… And eyepatch man told Aunt they were dead… and I-" Peter was having a hard time getting out just exactly what he wanted to say, but Tony could piece together enough to know that the child had been reliving the death of his parents.

"Hey, hey, it's okay. You don't need to tell me," Tony paused, not knowing what the hell he was doing. He had a hard enough time comforting _himself_ when he had a nightmare, let alone a five year old kid, "Do you, uh, wanna sleep with me?"

And he was being stupid, of course that wouldn't help, Peter wouldn't find any comfort-

The boy nodded again and detached himself from the man's legs, instead reaching a small hand out and curling it around two fingers on Tony's right hand.

They hand-held their way back to the guest room, where the mini Iron Man began to fly around, tracing the perimeter over and over again. Peter curled up against Tony's chest, hand lightly resting against the Arc Reactor's blue light. He had stiffened when the warm skin made contact with the shirt covering the device, but talked himself into relaxing as best he could. This wasn't Obie or a vibranium shield. This was Peter Parker.

The light was almost serving as a night-light for the child, blue light falling across the now-sleeping Peter's cheeks and highlighting the small smile on his lips. Somehow, to Tony's asstonishment, the boy was happy in his arms, was happy to rest his little palm on the humming blue circle. And if it was helping Peter feel safe, if it was making him smile, then Tony supposed he could allow the contact just this once.


	5. Paper Towel Toast with a Dash of Gladus

* _Authors Note:_ _Hey all! So first of all, I am super sorry for the huge hiatus there. Basically, school happened, and for me, it's really hard to juggle being a science major in college with my joy for writing. So naturally, I fell off of the face of the earth without a word. Because of this, I made this chapter extra long (10,000 words instead of the usual 6,000); hopefully that will somehow make up for the gap in story making!_

 _As for future updates, I can't give you guys a set schedule. I'm starting a new job this summer, as well as moving in with my partner (it almost sounds like I'm a real adult?), so there's a bunch of unknowns this summer and therefore I won't be able to promise anything. However, I have not given up on this fic, and seek to finish it (hopefully in the next five years XD). Thank you all for reading and sticking by this process. Again, I'm super sorry it was such a long wait. Hopefully this chapter will make up for it!*_

* * *

Tony woke up that Tuesday morning to a squirming body atop him, knobby elbows and knees jabbing into his ribs. For a moment, he froze up. He was in unfamiliar territory, and that humming noise above him must be a helicopter flying by, and the small body wriggling around must be some new type of torture the Ten Rings were introducing; what could that small body be? Were they trying to torture by small monkey?

But then the groans of "Mr. Tony, Mr. Tony, _toast,"_ reminded him that he's only in the guest room, that Peter's Iron Man was not a helicopter flying over Afghanistan desert, and the writhing monkey was only a five year old who, apparently, wanted toast.

The constant moving ceased at the feeling of the older man tensing up, but the weight of the child did not leave. Tony tried to breathe long and deep, attempting to trick Peter into letting him sleep in longer, because Tony was honestly not ready to take care of a child for a full day. Maybe, just maybe, if he pretended he was still sleeping, all his responsibilities would miraculously disappear.

"Mr. Tony, I know you're awake," Peter said, giggling as he pat at Tony's face. The mechanic groaned, eyes fluttering open at being found out. The boy cheered and began wriggling once more, bouncing up and down from where he sat on Tony's chest.

The air was suddenly knocked out of him as Peter got more enthusiastic with using Tony as a bouncy cushion, and large calloused hands shot up to grasp small arms, "Please stop Pete, just woke up. I have a," he yawned before continuing, "heart condition…"

"I want toast!" Peter protested, and evidently the child didn't give two shits about the man's weak heart if it meant he wasn't going to be getting toast. His grip on Peter stopped the boy from bouncing however, so at least that was a plus.

"'Kay, toast, I know, stop screamin'," Tony protested, turning his head on his pillow to glance at the clock positioned on his side table and _jesus fucking christ it was six thirty in the morning,_ "God, why did ya wake me up so early?"

"Mr. Steve always wakes me up now," Peter informed him, confusion written on his face as if he didn't know normal people did not wake up at the ass crack of dawn. Tony had to get this kid away from Steve Rogers; the Captain was restricting the boy from getting a good sleep-in, teaching him horrible Captain America morals. A sudden nightmare-causing image flitted through Tony's mind: a future Peter, getting up early every morning to go on a morning run like his dear old pop, not knowing any better. An oblivious Peter, who had been raised on healthy eating habits and daily exercising. Tony shivered at such a horrifying image, knowing the idea would haunt him for many nightmares to come.

"Yeah, okay, but Cap has an unusual sleep schedule that most people don't follow. Because unlike Cap, we're sane," Tony grumbled, sitting up in the bed and causing Peter to crawl off of his body. Truthfully, the genius had no right to talk bad about sleeping schedules. Yes, the Captain got up early, but he also went to sleep early as well. Tony didn't 'go to sleep'. 'Passing out' was a far more accurate phrase.

"Toast? Please?" Peter pleaded, pulling the man out of his musings. And Tony really wanted to say no, because the bed was comfortable and taking care of the child was something he was not qualified for. If social workers caught wind of the Avengers leaving young, impressionable Peter Parker with notorious ex-playboy Tony Stark, they would all collectively have an aneurysm. And even though Tony had stated, several times he might add, that he was done with that lifestyle in front of heaps of reporters, it didn't seem to make a difference. He would still be seen as the man from his party days.

That being said, he wouldn't trust himself with a kid either. In fact, he was sure he was having an aneurysm right alongside the social workers, because taking care of a child was too much for his weak heart to handle. He would have gladly passed the torch to literally anyone. He trusted the homeless hippy that lived in the alleyway a few blocks down and only ate prunes more than himself when it came to child care.

But Tony was the only available adult unit left in the tower, and the child needed to be fed, no matter how badly Tony wanted to ignore it.

"Yes, yes, toast. Coming right up," he conceded with a sigh, bare feet meeting the guest room carpet as he sat on the edge of the bed. Peter squealed in delight, scrambling off the bed and sprinting out of the room, running feet thumping down the hall towards the kitchen. Tony followed behind the boy, albeit much slower and without an abundant amount of energy.

He paused to throw on a large shirt from one of the wooden drawers. He had no clue as to who's shirt it was; the guest room was a bed for the people that were too tired to make it up to their respective floors. Clothes were left behind all the time, and the next user of the guest room was allowed to borrow said clothes if need be. This rule had been implicitly made after Tony had a romp in the guest room, he and his partner having been too hot and bothered to make it up to his own floor. That morning, he had walked out into the living room with no clothes on, to the horror of the team enjoying their morning. From then on, the dressers were full of mismatched clothing items for all sizes, not-so-subtly urging Tony to leave his birthday suit for the bedroom.

And he really didn't have much of an issue with this new rule. Having clothes to walk out with meant he wouldn't have to walk bare into the chilly, colder-than-Peter's-boner-water air. And if it meant Tony could snatch up a white SSR shirt that was much too large on him and not get an odd look, well. That was just a small bonus.

By the time he reached the communal area, Peter had already pulled out his toys from the toy box to play with, obviously attempting patience as he waited for the older man to make his breakfast. Tony tried not to linger on the compromising position Scooby-Doo and Godzilla were placed in, even though Peter insisted they were "only fighting".

"JARVIS, coffee please. The usual," Tony requested, pulling the sandwich bread out of the fridge as he did so.

"Of course, Sir," the AI responded, the coffee maker chirping and whirring in what was probably a 'good morning' of sorts. It was one of Tony's latest creations, adding an AI to the coffee machine. So far, things had gone well. This was, of course, not counting the one time the poor machine had started stress-making cold coffee, traumatized by a loud argument between Clint and Tony a few feet away.

Removing the twist-tie from the sandwich bag, he pulled out a single slice of bread. It reminded him of when he was a child, watching Jarvis do the same with a small Tony insisting that all crusts be cut off in the background. Jarvis had done what the young Stark had requested without question, and those mornings were some of the few moments in his childhood where he had felt listened to.

"Pete, do you like your crusts on your bread?" Tony asked, the coffee maker gurgling happily in the background.

"Cut them off, please!" Peter called back from the living room floor, voice floating from the space obstructed by the sofa. Tony grinned to himself, taking some odd happiness in having to perform the same duty Jarvis had executed all those years ago.

The mechanic cut the edges off of the bread before finally placing it in the toaster. The red toaster beeped in delight, the piece of food disappearing into the slot as the appliance started the toasting process. And maybe the team didn't approve of the AI appliances, especially when it didn't toast Clint's beloved english muffins. But they had grown on Tony, as most things he built did. It didn't hurt that the buzzes and beeps of the appliances made them personable. He could especially relate to the cold coffee stress-making.

Tony's mind wandered as he leaned on the counter, staring at the empty space at the dining table on the other side of the kitchen. He had so much to do today. He had been slacking slightly on his Stark Industries responsibilities ever since Peter had become apart of the tower life. And not because he was parenting (which was _not_ happening because he was _not_ a parent), but safety measures and tiny flying suits had suddenly become much more important than any new version of the Starkpad or the SI smartphone. He had been ignoring Pepper as of late, pretending he wasn't seeing the frantic emails that his CEO kept sending him. He knew they were all about the new models, all about how many meetings he had missed. And he definitely knew that emails were most certainly not about her first date with Happy, even though Tony had said he was okay with it. Granted, most of the time when Tony said something was 'okay', it most certainly was not, so the new couple were right to be weary.

His brain was swimming with work, figuring out his plans for the day, until a child's disturbingly accurate sounds of play gunfire interrupted his train of thought. He realized exactly then what the full extent of Peter's existence in his every waking moment truly meant.

Oh god, he wasn't going to be able to get down to the workshop today, was he? Pepper was going to murder him.

"Hey Pete? What do you and Mr. Steve do on Tuesdays?" Tony asked, checking the goat themed calendar magnetized to the fridge to ensure that it was, indeed, Tuesday. The toaster beeped happily, the toast springing up from the slot Tony had placed it in. He pulled the food out of the toaster and set it on a plastic plate, thanking the appliance as he did so.

"Mr. Steve takes me to the park!" Peter exclaimed. This was quickly followed by the sound of plastic toy colliding with plastic toy; there must have been an epic battle going on.

Great. The park. Now Tony _knew_ he wasn't going to be getting any work done. The R&D department was not going to be happy. Not that Tony had ever been affected by the glares the board gave him, but it always made him uncomfortable when someone expected him to care about something that he didn't.

Grabbing the butter out of the fridge and a knife from one of the kitchen drawers, he prepared Peter's toast with an inexperienced hand. It was toasty enough to be crunchy, which was a good sign. But the butter was melting in pools, and maybe butter pools was what Peter liked?

"Toast is ready, Pete," Tony announced to the unseen figure, who popped into view and dashed to the dining table at the mention of breakfast. He set the plate of buttered toast at the boy's seat. He watched as Peter picked up his toast, nervous that Peter wouldn't like it. He didn't want to see the look on the boy's face when he figured out that Tony was a sub-par adult, unfit to give Peter what he needs. Tony hastily turned to the coffee machine, too inexplicably nervous to watch the recognizable look of disappointment settle on Pete's face. The genius watched the last few drops of brown liquid fall into the pot, trying not to listen for cries of disgust.

"Mr. Tony," Peter whined, dread plummeting deep in Tony's stomach, "There's too much butter."

Tony gazed up at the ceiling, not sure whether he was asking JARVIS (or maybe a Norse god?) to spite him for messing up something as simple as buttered fucking toast. He did not have enough coffee in his system to deal with his own incompetence this early in the morning.

Desperately, his brain scrambled to find some solution to his error, because his legacy as a reluctant parental figure was not going to be butter-soaked breakfast.

In a stroke of genius, Tony victoriously grabbed a paper towel, walking over to where Peter sat. He took the towel and dabbed at the toast, Peter's brown eyes widening in absolute horror as the man did so, "Mr. Tony! What are you doing?!"

"I'm taking away some butter. See?" Tony explained, pulling the now soiled paper towel away to reveal a slightly less buttery piece of toast. Peter did not look amused, "There's less butter now. So, eat. Get that toast in your rumbly stomach."

"No," Peter protested, crossing his arms with a determined pout to his lips. And Tony, for the life of him, could not understand why 'no', because the toast looked perfectly fine. The butter pools were now gone, surely Peter could eat the toast.

"What do you mean ' _no'_? I thought you liked buttered toast?"

"You put paper towel on it! Now it's going to taste like paper towel!" Peter argued, squinting at Tony as if this was obvious physics; as if transferring taste between objects by touch was as real as gravity or Newton's Laws.

"No it's not," Tony tried to assure the boy, but Peter was having none of it.

"Is to!"

Tony sighed, running a hand through his sleep-mussed hair. He was tired, and he hadn't gotten his coffee yet. Arguing with a five year old was the last thing he wanted to do at the moment.

For a brief second, he considered calling Bruce. Tony didn't know a quarter of what Bruce knew on how to take care of a child; Peter's chance of injury would marginally decrease if Dr. Banner was there instead. But Tony was a Stark man, and Stark men were made of iron, and if a five year old could best the man behind the Iron Man suit, it would be high time to retire. He would be left alone to tinker with old cars, ridicule DUM-E, and mourn the good ol' days. And although there were worse things than a lonely retirement, Tony wasn't quite ready to accept this fate. He could not call Bruce Banner.

"Okay. Okay. I ruined the toast even more. Fine. What do you want instead?" Tony asked, taking the paper plate from Peter and setting it on the counter next to the coffee machine. He tried not to let the annoyance seep into his tone, because being a picky eater was nothing to be ashamed of, and getting angry at the kid because he didn't want 'paper towel toast' sounded like a waste of time.

"Uncle Thor's Poptarts!" Peter exclaimed, and Tony had a suspicion that Peter would have refused the toast no matter how much butter was on it, because the boy hadn't had an ounce of hesitation before answering. And Tony knew that if Cap had been there, Rogers would have said no and then proceeded to suggest an apple instead. But Tony didn't feel like forcing healthy things onto the small boy; he felt like giving Peter an actual happy, maybe-not-incredibly-healthy-because-of-it, life. And if he got into Pete's good graces by allowing him to have some sugar in the morning, it was no skin off of Tony's back. He was willing to allow such a sugar-filled breakfast as long as the boy would forget the butter soaked toast.

Tony grabbed a Poptart pack out of the brown sugar box, which was Thor's favorite flavor based on all the raving the Asgardian did about it. Sometimes, the mechanic suspected Thor only came back to Earth for the Poptarts, and not for his friends who lived on it.

Peter rushed back to his toys as the Poptarts were placed in the toaster. The beep the toaster made sounded annoyed, as if it didn't know why it had to cook something else when the bread had been toasted perfectly.

"Sorry little dude," Tony mumbled to the hot-rod red appliance. He then turned to the coffee maker, which had been patiently waiting for him to collect his coffee. He thanked the machine, pouring himself a mug full and sighing when the caffeine burned a hot trail over his tongue and down his throat.

He knew he had to call Pepper. But he had been avoiding doing such for as long as he possibly could. Because, well. She hadn't a clue of the reason he had been so radio silent. And he had a suspicion Pepper wouldn't react too casually to the idea of Tony Stark taking care of a small human. But not telling her that he was basically 3 days behind on his work would throw her off her schedule, and she would be consequently livid. Tony did not need a livid Pepper when he had a five year old to take care of.

"JARVIS, call Pepper, will you?" he requested as he took another sip of his coffee, the caffeine not kicking in nearly as fast he wanted it to be. Tony sat down on one of the bar-stools surrounding the pink granite island, feet resting on the last rung, not quite tall enough to touch the tile floor.

"Calling Ms. Potts," JARVIS announced from somewhere above Tony's messy brown head. The sounds of plastic toys smashing into each other acted as an on-hold telephone music of sorts, filling the communal floor with silence before the CEO of Stark industries graced the room with the all too familiar tone of frustration.

"Tony! Why haven't you answered any of my emails? I've been trying to contact you-" Pepper Potts began, and wow, it suddenly felt like he could breathe easier, despite the frantic tone. Pepper had always been able to calm him down, to ease him with her familiar worry-filled words. And after such a long time without talking, having been too preoccupied with Peter and the team, her voice was like crawling back into a warm bed after weeks of business travels. Tony hadn't noticed how much he had missed Pepper Potts. Sometimes, he conveniently forgot how much he loved having her in his life. The therapist thought this had something to do with not wanting to give himself good things. Tony just called it 'being busy'.

"Pepper, honey, nobody uses email anymore. That's only for 'Bed, Bath, and Beyond' newsletters or porn blog updates, which by the way I honestly don't know why I keep getting, because I unsubscribed forever ago-"

Pepper sighed deeply from the other end of the line, and for someone who didn't know Pepper, they would have assumed she was extremely angry. But having known Pepper for so long, Tony knew she was smiling alongside her eye rolling and exasperated exhaling. He allowed himself a small grin as he gazed into the coffee mug.

"Tony, I really don't need to hear about this again. What you subscribe to on your off time is not my business-"

"You mean unsubscribe from, Pep. _Un_ subscribe. I don't need porn when I have superheros working out in my gym," Tony pointed out, thinking of one superhero in particular. And he really shouldn't have said that, because Pepper Potts was not dumb. He had been caught by his CEO giving Cap's retreating form the 'I'm not looking but I totally am' on numerous occasions. And no matter how many times he had tried to deny her accusations of glancing at that American ass, she was sure on what she had seen; Pepper knew what Tony Stark looked like when he was checking people out.

Consequently, she was the only person that knew about his painful pining of the one and only Captain America.

"Funny you should bring up superheroes, because you answer Steve Rogers' emails whenever he sends you one," Pepper retaliated, smugness dripping through her voice from the speakers in the ceiling. Damn her.

"The "Star Spangled Man with a Plan' is trying his best, I've already told you. I'm only trying to meet him in the middle which, by the way, I am doing because that's one of the things you complained I wasn't doing. The fact that he's stopped ending his emails with "I eagerly await your letter" is progress," Tony protested, because he was not about to let Pepper use Cap to make a point about ignoring her many messages.

"Oh, meeting him in the middle? How's that worked out for you so far?"

"I dunno, how'd your first date with my head of security go?" Tony shot back, teasing without an intent to hurt. But suddenly, the mood shifted over the phone. And wasn't he just great at shifting the mood? Going too far was something he was an expert at; one of the very many things that eventually pushed Pepper away. And sure, maybe that had been a bit too harsh to say. Meeting in the middle had been a sore subject when it came to their relationship. It had been a major reason why Pepper slept on the couch most nights towards the end of their relationship; why they had such loud arguments when Tony came home late in an Iron Man suit with scorch marks.

Silence followed his unfiltered comment, and if he listened closely enough, he swore he could hear her sigh, which she had probably tried to cover with the palm of her hand to the receiver.

"Tony…" Pepper muttered quietly when the silence came too close to the line of 'blatantly awkward.' There was something just shy of mournful in her tone, and it unsettled him.

Tony was getting ready to crack some joke, to somehow release the tension in the air. Tension that, frankly, didn't need to be there, because Tony was over Pepper and was 'happy for Happy.' But before he could decide on which joke would ease the tension best, a voice floated in from the living room.

"Mr. Tony, what's a porn blog?"

He froze in fear. Oh shit. He had totally forgotten all about the 5 year old, only a room over.

"Tony? Tony, what was that?" Pepper interrogated, something akin to anxiety in her tone. Tony could almost see her leaning forward on her desk by her elbows, ankles crossing and ungodly high heels clicking together. Her perfect eyebrows were probably raised in the particular way that she reserved for Tony's many questionable decisions. The same expression had become known worldwide, when some photographer had been able to capture the moment Pepper realized Tony Stark was getting in a race car to 'recklessly drive fast' in the streets of Milan.

"Um, well, you see-" he tried, his voice feeble and quickly tapering off as Pepper quickly interrupted him.

"Is that a child? Tony Stark, do you have a _CHILD_?" Pepper's voice shrieked, and he had totally planned on not telling her about Peter. He had known she was going to react like this, had known she would immediately dive into all the reasons why this 'wasn't a good idea.' Although he agreed with her, Tony did not want to hear about all the ways she thought he was incapable; he didn't need to hear all of the things he kept telling himself.

"He's not _mine!_ " Tony shot back, and it was imperative that Pepper know this, because although he had made many mistakes in his lifetime, accidentally creating a small human had gladly not been one of them.

"He's not- did you kidnap a _child_? _Oh god I need to call Happy-"_ he could hear desk drawers opening and slamming shut, possibly looking for a Starkpad to contact her new lover with.

"What the hell, Pep? No, of course I did not _kidnap a goddamn child!_ I'm only taking care of him because Cap is out on a mission, and for some reason, he trusts me with the kid!" Tony looked over to Peter at that moment, wondering if their loud conversation was possibly bothering the boy. However, he simply looked content. This could easily have been because there were Poptarts waiting in the toaster for him.

There was a gasp from Pepper's end, the noisy scrambling ceasing in the background as she locked on to what Tony had implied, "Steve? _The_ Steve Rogers? As in Captain America? He thought it would be a good idea to leave you alone with a child?"

"Unless you know a different Captain America, then yes," Tony grumbled in response, taking another swig of coffee and deliberately ignoring her last question, "Cap insists on pushing his parental responsibilities onto me whenever he can. If I didn't know any better, I'd think he's roping me into a non-consensual parenthood," but of course, he did know better. He knew that Cap didn't see Tony in such a way that he'd want to 'co-parent' with him. Hell, Tony wasn't even sure the super-soldier knew gay parenting was basically accepted nowadays.

"What do you mean, _his_ parental responsibilities?" Pepper questioned, hysteria slowly beginning to seep through her tone, "Why does Steve have parental responsibilities? Are you telling me Steve is a _father_?"

"No, no, trust me, Captain America is still very much a blushing virgin," Tony chuckled, restraining himself from adding that he would be happy to change this fact.

Knowing what she was probably thinking, knowing what conclusions she was coming to, Tony told Pepper all about how Captain Rogers had stumbled upon a newly orphaned child and had somehow thought it a great idea to take him home. He left out the details about the panic attacks and the general difficulty he had with being around Peter. But Pepper knew him well enough; she probably knew what Tony was going through without him saying.

"So you see, that's why I was calling you," Tony explained, wrapping up the past few weeks, "I'm taking care of Peter today, so I'm not going to be able to get any work done," he had pulled out Peter's Poptart during the story, the boy now sitting at the dining table a few meters away from the granite island, eating his Poptart with ravenous content. Tony knew he was going to regret giving the five year old a sugary breakfast later on, but the idea that Peter had been eating nothing but healthy apples and granola bars in his stay at the tower made any sugar rush more than worth it.

There was a pause from the other end of the phone; a deadly silence in which the world ceased to turn. Pepper hadn't spoken once throughout all of his explaining, and without talking to her face, he couldn't measure whether she was beyond pissed or cautiously indifferent. Tony waited with held breath, sitting stiffly on the bar-stool and staring down at the sparkling granite. His coffee rested on the counter next to the toaster behind him, having been forgotten in the bustle of Poptart preparing and conversing with his ex. The mug looked too lonely, and Tony _really_ wanted to get up and grab it, giving him something to focus while he waited for Pepper to berate him or begrudgingly allow his procrastination. But he felt frozen in the moment, and moving out of his seat felt like an impossible thing in that moment.

The silence was finally broken by a long sigh, full of unhinged frustration. Tony grimaced in his luck. Berating it was.

"Tony, you can't put off your work today. I needed the new models for the Stark smartphone line three days ago. R&D is expecting a prototype; capable and functional. Please tell me you at least have the sketches," and damn if Pepper didn't sound completely done with the whole of Tony's existence. He couldn't necessarily blame her, she was CEO of a company where the inventor liked to create in sporadic outbursts. Therapists had concluded it was his way of distracting himself from emotions that his brain decided were better left in the subconscious. They had seemed very serious when they had told Tony as such, but quite honestly, his brain filing away unwanted emotions didn't really sound like a bad thing.

"I have time," Tony replied, avoiding Pepper's question because he in fact did not have a single sketch done, "I'll be able to whip it all up before the meeting in a couple of weeks-"

"The meeting is tomorrow," the woman deadpanned.

He sucked in a sharp breath through his clenched teeth. That didn't make sense at all, there was no plausible way he had lost his sense of time that much. Tony racked his brain, distinctly remembering he had set multiple alarms to remind him, fully knowing that he would forget.

"JARVIS, I had reminders in place, didn't I? Why didn't you tell me?" Tony spat, stress folding on itself and settling back on his shoulders. It was a heavy, familiar feeling, and not at all welcome. Something in the back of his mind supplied that this stress had not rested on his shoulders since spending all of his time taking care of Peter Parker, but Tony quickly ignored this.

"I did on numerous occasions, Sir. You insisted on muting the reminders with every attempt I made," Tony grumbled at this, JARVIS continuing to talk over Tony's unintelligent mumbles, "May I also comment that Sir's habit of projecting fault onto my software is considered unhealthy?"

"Go to hell, JARVIS," Tony barked, not needing the sass from his AI that he had lovingly installed.

"Sir," the AI curtly responded. Another sigh could be heard from Pepper as the conversation with JARVIS ended. Tony glanced over at Peter, who was still happily chewing at his Poptart. The kid seemed to be completely unaware of the predicament happening, his world having become zeroed in on the sugary breakfast, looking at the pastry as if it was his long-time lover.

"Tony, have you considered finding a babysitter?" Pepper asked through the speakers in the kitchen, "I'm sure someone will be available to watch over Peter while you work."

"Pep, honey, you're killing me here. I already told you, this is why I'm calling you in the first place. There _isn't_ anybody here. I'm alone. With a child," and simply just saying such a thing brought shivers of fear down his spine. Tony was still trying is hardest to deny the reality that despite learning jack shit about parenting, the life of a child was in his calloused hands.

"Maybe call one of your teammates?" Pepper suggested, "I'm sure Bruce would understand. And he's got a soft spot for kids."

Tony sighed, "It's as if you assume I haven't already thought about calling him. Which is out of the question because I am _not_ about to get in the way of whatever is going on with that lady friend of his that he's visiting."

"You mean Betty?" the abrupt excitement in Pepper's voice was obvious, no matter how hard she attempted to conceal it. Apparently, 'Betty' and Bruce was something to get excited about. And damn her because somehow, she always knew the latest scoop about every Avenger, as if they all went to her as their resident superhero therapist.

"Who's 'Betty'? He only mentioned meeting up with someone _as he was leaving_ ," Tony glared at the hidden cameras he knew were placed in the room, seeing as how he had done the placing, "Are you spying on us, Ms. Potts?"

"People just find a friendly confidant in me, is that so hard to believe?"

Tony mocked her, humming unsurely, as if he didn't always come running to Pepper when anything happened; as if he didn't know she was a good listener.

"You're full of crap, Tony. Call Bruce. You have to be at tomorrow's meeting with everything prepared, no exceptions. Make sure to get _some_ sleep tonight," he knew that if he could see her face right now, she'd have a gentle smile playing on her lips, full of sympathy and care. This was the smile she usually had right before she gave him one of her light, barely there hugs that always made him feel like he was made of glass.

"Yeah, sure," Tony responded with a lazy wave of his hand to the empty air, as if Pepper could see it, "See you tomorrow."

The familiar click of Pepper hanging up was the response he got, and once again, he was alone with the five year-old child. Those big brown eyes blinked owlishly at Tony from his seat at the table, Poptart devoured without a crumb on his plate. A living human vacuum. Pete's mouth, when it came into contact with any sugar or pizza, could have been classified as the world's eighth wonder.

"Let's not mention 'porn blogs' to Mr. Steve, okay?"

"Okay!" Pete exclaimed, the widest smile Tony had ever seen forming on the boy's face, as if this was the most exhilarating thing he could agree to.

* * *

Once breakfast had been successfully achieved, the next step of the day was the park. A step that, at first, Tony thought could be put off until later in the afternoon so he could start working on the smartphone prototype. However, he was soon proven that, no, the trip to the park had to happen right then because apparently, Pete and Poptarts did not mix well.

"You're a monster, you know that?" Tony grunted as he tried to grab hold of Pete's flailing right leg, shoeless and soon to be sockless too, by the looks of it. How Tony had managed to put on the left shoe was a mystery.

"Monster, monster!" Peter screamed, sending his sock flying with a particularly strong kick to where the bearded man's face had been before he ducked. And damn it if Tony wasn't losing his cool, because machines never acted this way and it had taken seven fucking minutes to get that one sock on his tiny elusive feet and now he was getting aimed kicks to the face and of course Howard's wonderful parenting would automatically take over before Tony could think.

"Peter Parker!" and oh no, he had used the tone his dad would use; that deep, ground shaking tamber that lodged fear right in every throat of the children who heard it.

Peter's legs immediately went still, but the fear in his wide eyes was nowhere near worth the abrupt cooperation. Tony could see every moment of his childhood, such as a duck from a drunken fist, reflected in Peter's eyes; could see the pain Tony had felt when he would receive double the force of the second swing for ducking from the first.

Shoes and socks were quickly forgotten.

"Peter, I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have yelled like that. Did I scare you?" Tony apologized, resting his hands on his knees instead of placing them on the boy, not wanting to scare him. He knew better than anyone how one comforting hand coming towards him could bring back memories. And Tony really hoped there weren't any memories _to_ bring up for Peter, but he wasn't going to take his chances.

Peter responded with a quick and precise nod, large brown eyes still locked onto Tony as if in defense mode, watching the man's every move and assessing whether he was in danger. The older man's heart sank to the floor.

"I'm sorry buddy, I'm not angry with you. Dammit, Rogers should have never left me with you, I knew I'd only become another Howard-," and obviously, Tony had not meant, nor wanted, Peter to hear these words. The mechanic was still under the impression that the boy's hearing was selective like a machine, only hearing the things Tony wanted it to hear. Unfortunately enough, Peter was a human.

"What's a Howard?" Peter asked, voice hushed as if he were too afraid to give the man a reason to get angry. It was a scared tone, an anxious one; the same tone that Tony had used with Edwin Jarvis, asking questions about why Dad had been mad while the butler was bandaging him up.

For a second, Tony had to fight the urge to snap. The sudden need to get angry, to scare the boy off from ever asking about Howard again. It was the automatic response to anyone when they asked about his dad. But then, that's exactly what his father would have done. What his father had taught Tony to do. And although off-putting, adults knew how to interpret Tony's harsh words as his defensive nature. But a child knew no difference. There was no way in hell he was about to discourage Peter from asking questions.

"A… Uh. Hm," Tony dug his fingernails into his knees, thinking about all the words he could use to describe what "a Howard" was. Most were inappropriate for the current audience.

"Howard was my dad," was the only thing that could come out of his mouth. Really, it was the only thing Tony could say that wouldn't earn him a disappointed frown from the Captain, if the man was there. But then again, if Cap were there, Tony wouldn't be talking to the five year old or getting ready to take him to the park.

"Did he teach you to be angry?" and fuck, this kid was getting to the bottom of this faster than Rogers or Bruce or any therapist ever had. Peter blinked up at the older man, whose face had gone cold and guarded, staring back at the child as if he had been asked something as simple as 'do you like apples?' Peter must have sensed he had done something wrong, because next thing Tony knew, the tiny body wriggled into his lap, the back of his head resting up against the arc reactor. The movement shocked Tony out of his dark thoughts, and the man looked down to see Peter looking right back up at him, an awed look on his face as if he hadn't known the bearded man would look upside down at this angle. His tiny hand was holding the sock he had flung almost minutes before, offering it to Tony.

Tony took the sock and gently placed it back on Pete's foot, chin lightly resting against the top of the boy's fluffy head as he reached around the child in his lap, "Uh. Yeah, he taught me how to be angry. Howard taught me a lot of things. Best to save that story for another day."

Peter didn't speak for a second after that, a thoughtful look on his face as he surveyed the living room. It was almost comical, those tiny eyebrows slightly furrowed with a barely-there frown. Such a Steve expression.

Tony cursed his fluttering (albeit weak) heart at the thought of 'Steve'.

"Daddy is my favorite dad," Peter declared into the room, causing Tony to pause wiggling the other tiny velcro light-up Avengers shoe onto the boy's foot, "I love him very much."

Tony had almost forgotten he and the boy were part of the very exclusive 'my parents died to mysterious accidents' club. His heart sunk at the fact that maybe the boy was still waiting for his dad to come home, waiting for that plane that would never come back to land.

"Do you… miss your dad, Pete?" and he really had to tread lightly here, because he wasn't sure how aware children Peter's age were understanding of death and the permanence of it all. Tony had had the misfortune of being completely aware of what death meant, when his parents had bit the dust. More aware than he would have liked to have been, seeing as how his habit of excessive drinking had started then. A habit he was still trying to kick to the curb.

"I miss Daddy all the time. But he's coming back, he promised," Peter declared, determination so ingrained in his conviction, Tony didn't have the heart to tell the boy that Dad wasn't coming back, no matter how much Peter had loved him.

"You're a strong, brave monster," Tony said with more emotion than he had intended. But Peter grinned happily at that, kicking the air with his now shoe-covered feet with a delighted shout. All emotion the man had let through in those few couple of words was more than worth the little monster's joy.

Tony pursed his lips, stopping the smile that threatened to spread across his lips.

After Peter had finally gotten his shoes on, it didn't take long until the unlikely pair hit the streets, the boy's small hand wrapped in a death grip around Tony's three fingers. Those big brown eyes were flitting every which way, trying to take in every sight of the busy life that was Midtown Manhattan. And Tony couldn't blame the kid for attempting to choke the life out of his calloused fingers. To any human, the busy life of New York was overwhelming, much less for a kid whose only family remaining had been murdered by giant scary robots less than a month ago.

"You okay down there, Pete?" Tony asked, crouching down slightly as they walked in order for the small boy to hear him. Peter's head snapped to Tony in surprise, large brown eyes softening as he looked into the reflection of the man's sunglasses. He gave the taller man a couple of nods before once more turning his attention to their path ahead. Tony guided Peter through the crowd in weaving movements meant to avoid as many people as possible.

Truthfully, Tony hadn't been to many parks in the area over his time living in the tower. He never really had a reason to. Back when they were still together, if Pepper wanted to take a walk, they'd usually fly to somewhere scenic and breathtaking. Parks always had screaming and crying humans, and Tony didn't find relaxation from the symphony of squealing children. He always did his exercise in the Tower's gym, or when he began to feel too antsy, would take a suit out for a spin. So there really had never been a need to go to a park

Consequently, Tony had no fucking clue as to where he was supposed to take the small child.

There were so many parks in Midtown Manhattan. Chelsea Park, Bryant Park, Robert Moses Playground, St. Vartan Park, Madison Square Park, Bellevue South Park and then that one park by Hell's Kitchen. The reviews were unreliable and all over the place due to white soccer moms and what their idea of a "good" park was, and Tony was panicking. Because obviously Peter had a specific park in mind and the kid seemed so excited to go and scream along with the other small children. But Cap hadn't left a Post-It note with his signature smiley face in the right corner telling Tony what to do. It almost felt as though he had been set up, doomed to disappoint the child.

There was one clue, however, that Tony Stark was banking on.

When the team had first started living at Stark Tower, the citizens had gone haywire. There was an excitement in the city, everyone keeping their eyes wide open in hopes of catching one of the Avengers doing mundane, everyday things. The Whole Foods business had skyrocketed across America when Thor had been spotted eyeing the olive bar at the Whole Foods on West 24th street. The Starbucks on 7th street had never ceased to be crowded after Tony Stark and some unknown man (Bruce) were spotted buying a coffee and some green tea. And of course, the media flipped their shit when the adonis of a man, Captain America, was spotted running in Central Park at the buttcrack of dawn a few days after moving into the Tower.

But unlike the other Avengers that had been spotted, Rogers did not stop his daily runs in Central Park. The man had an ability to pretend something wasn't happening, and if the World War II vet ever felt too watched, he would simply take a run through the park's woods and leave the cameras behind him in a trail of his own dust.

Sooner than later, the media stopped covering Cap's morning run. Whether the news reporters were getting too tired at waking up at such an ungodly hour, or they were bored by the Captain's lack of reaction, Tony could only guess. But Rogers was left alone every morning to his run in Central Park, something he swore relaxed him and started his day off with a smile. Which Tony thought was absolute bullshit because who in their right mind enjoyed running? But then again, Tony's lung capacity was not the greatest, so maybe he was a little biased.

Cap was known to be a creature of habit. The super soldier loved his routines, loved having a schedule that he could rely on. He took pride in the places he considered his, from his room in the Tower, to the room he had commandeered as an art studio, to the alleyways he had been beaten up in back when he had been a scrawny kid in Brooklyn. So Tony felt somewhat safe in assuming that Central Park was the right park. Peter hadn't piped up about the walk taking too long, so he could only hope he was doing the right thing.

And the two made quite a pair. Tony looked as plain as he could, wearing a (borrowed) Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap, a pair of unassuming, non-expensive jeans, a red Harvard University shirt he had picked up off the guest bedroom floor, and a pair of reflective aviators. Black tape had been placed over the Arc Reactor to hide the telling glow, a task that always left Tony feeling slightly nauseous and doused in a cold sweat.

Holding his hand was Peter, decked out from head to toe in Avengers merchandise. Something that Clint Barton had everything to do with.

When Clint had been assigned the duty of buying Peter clothes, they had assigned Natasha to go along with him, in hopes that her presence would mellow Clint enough so as to not pull his usual shit. However, when they had returned with twin smirks on their lips and many shopping bags in their hands, the team realized they had made a mistake.

So of course, Peter was dressed with a shirt of the Captain's shield, Nike shorts that had the "Just Do It" swish artistically placed to be Iron Man's smoke trail, and gym shoes with all the Avengers on them, lighting up with every step the walking advertisement took.

No one gave them a second glance, so Tony hesitantly allowed himself to be proud of not fucking up something as simple as dressing Peter for the day.

It was a perfectly warm, windy summer day in the city, something Tony could fully appreciate when Central Park finally came into view. Across the Columbus Circle, standing next to a FedEx office, the green trees of the park could be seen. Tony almost felt his shoulders drop with the feeling of relief when the screaming of children could be heard over the car traffic. He looked down to see Peter with a smile on his face, still gripping the life out of the older man's fingers. Despite how hard Tony looked at Peter, he could not find a smidge of disappointment on the child's face, and god he had never felt so relieved.

Once they crossed the street, Tony began to lead Peter to one of the nearest playgrounds, Heckscher Playground, at the entrance of Central Park. Because of course, he had assumed Peter would want to play with all the other young, chaotic children on the playground. Tony did not expect the noise of discontent that came from Peter.

"Where are you going, Mister Tony? We have to go see the berry lady!" and he knew kids spoke gibberish sometimes, but Peter really was not making sense.

"The… 'berry' lady?" Tony asked, the pair stopping in their tracks in the middle of the walkway because apparently, taking Peter to a playground was not what the child had in mind.

"Mister Steve and I always go see the berry lady. She's nice and old," Peter informed the mechanic with an air of certainty that Captain Rogers possessed most of the time. It brought a quick smile to Tony's face.

For a split second, Tony considered dissuading the young child about seeing the 'berry lady.' Work still hung over his head like an unwanted, depressive shadow, and going to the berry lady meant walking and taking longer at the park than he had planned. But then, Peter looked so set on seeing the berry lady, and who was he to stop a little man and his dreams?

"Alright then, berry lady it is," Tony announced, and they continued their walk.

For some reason, Tony had assumed the walk to the berry lady would only take a couple of minutes. For some reason, Tony forgot that Steve Rogers did not get tired of walking and a five year old boy had all the energy in the world. For some reason, Tony did not remember the fact that neither the Captain nor the small child would have a sense of exhaustion or time when it came to a stroll in the summer heat.

He, however, did not have the stamina of a super-soldier or a child; a fact of which he was painfully reminded of as the hunt for the berry lady began.

Tony had no qualms at first, when they walked by the Heckscher playground. He had already resigned himself to the idea that this was not the place they were supposed to be. But when they passed the baseball fields and then crossed the first street that ran through the park, Tony began to worry. Because this was taking much longer than he expected and he could almost feel the groan of his joints at the unexpected amount of walking. He was fit, sure, there was no doubt about it. It took a certain amount of muscles to do the superhero stuff that Tony did. But long walks when the stress was piled high did nothing good for his body.

He tried to last for as long as he possibly could along the walk that Peter was giving him. And Tony was proud to say that he had made it pretty far before considering turning around, probable upset child in tow as consequence. The Loeb Boathouse was in sight, and the ducks on the lake were quaking, and really, he had done good to warrant a turn-around. But just when he was about to break the bad news to the brown-haired boy, Peter suddenly began to tow Tony along with a new vigor. And just like that, they were suddenly on a bee-line path straight towards an old lady with a fruit stand, her back to the lake behind her.

"Berry lady! Berry lady!" Peter cheered as they moved towards the vendor as fast as Tony would let them. The woman turned her head at the sound of her name (was her name really 'Berry Lady'? Surely not), and a large smile that crinkled her sweet, wrinkly face appeared on her face as her gaze landed on Peter.

It was at this point that Peter let go of Tony's hand, rushing towards Berry Lady as fast as his little legs would let him. She crouched down to meet him as he approached, giving him a kind hug that was well received. Tony watched on skeptically, measuring the interaction between the two and preparing to rip the child out of her hands at any sign of creepiness. But nothing bad occurred, and once the hug was shared, the two began to hold an animated conversation.

"Did ya bring berries today? Did you bring the black ones? They like the black ones the best," Peter asked with excitement, clasping his hands together behind his back as if trying to contain his overflow of joy. Tony could see Pete's fingers wiggling however, obviously not successful in holding back his enthusiasm.

"Of course darling," and damn this lady was the classic Grandma neighbor, everything down to a 't'. Even her voice sounded like it had an overabundance of love and a need to make cookies, "How could I ever forget? You and your dad deserve nothing but the best berries."

And that was slightly confusing, because when had this lady ever met Peter's late father? Did this pair go back? Was this Peter's actual Grandmother? It was at this point, while Tony was caught in a rambling thought, that she finally turned away from Peter's beaming smile to land her gaze on him. Immediately, her brows furrowed in confusion.

"Well, you're not the strapping tall blonde I was expecting, now are you?" the woman said with a humor-filled smirk, and of course Cap would be flirting with old fruit venders in Central Park and making them lust after him. Classic.

"That strapping young blond would be Steve. He's out for a little, so I've been put on kid duty," he offered his hand, "I'm Tony."

The woman shook his hand with a firm grip, grin on her face as if she were making fun of how formal he had introduced himself. By the way her wrinkles curved perfectly to the smile as if she never stopped, he could only imagine how happy of a person this woman must be, "I'm Gladus. It's very nice to meet you."

And holy shit she totally looked like a Gladus. Tony would have guessed Margret on the fly, but 'Gladus' fit this woman like cookies and milk. Which he was almost certain this woman fed to her grandchildren when the parents weren't watching.

She let go of his hand and gave him the once-over. Tony looked down in momentary panic to see if the black tape had somehow peeled off the arc and revealed his telling feature, but there was no hint of light peeking through.

"I will admit, I'm very disappointed to see Steve is a taken man. But you're soft on the eyes too, so I'll let this one slide. You both make a wonderfully good-looking pair."

She winked at him as if they had just shared a secret, a knowing look in her eyes as if he had told her everything without uttering a single word.

Before he had time to soak in what she had said, and correct her that Steve was very much still on the market, most definitely not interested in Tony, and probably waiting on Gladus to make the first move, she turned to Peter, sweet smile still gracing her lips.

"Does Dad number two here like berries, too?" Gladus asked sweetly, and Tony was about to confirm that he thought berries were pretty alright, when his brain finally caught itself up to speed and realized what Gladus had really just said.

It felt as though the air had been punched out of his lungs, rushing out of him as if it couldn't get out fast enough. Dad? Gladus thought…. Dad? And 'Dad number two' implied there was a 'Dad number one,' which meant Steve Rogers, which meant Gladus thought they were both dads, which meant Gladus thought they were _gay_ dads, and Tony Stark's weak heart felt ready to implode because damn it, he had not prepared for this sort of thing in a simple stroll through the park. But of course, nothing was ever simple in their life.

And it should have been easy to solve this issue; easy to let the old fruit vendor know that she was simply mistaken. But his brain conveniently forgot how to speak English at that moment, as it always did when he needed it to do its job the most.

"We. Uh," was all he could stutter out in his flustered state, in an attempt to inform Gladus that he was neither a Dad nor a human in a happy relationship. But before Tony could stumble through saying anything more, Peter gave her an enthusiastic nod, looking to Tony as if the mechanic made the world spin on its axis.

Everything suddenly felt full of cotton balls. His mouth went dry and the noises around them in the busy park went muffled. Because Peter had just confirmed to this stranger, albeit a sweet one, that Tony was indeed the second dad. He had also just assumed Tony liked berries, but that wasn't the fact Tony decided to focus on.

A father, in charge of the happiness and well-being of a child. A dad, who was in a happy relationship with a nice looking, dorito of a man. And fuck, if this wasn't sending Tony into a spiral because truthfully, he never imagined himself ever being called "dad" by anyone. He had never had that talk with anyone he'd ever been with; Pepper and him didn't get their relationship stable enough to ever reach that point. And Tony had never really felt the urge to have a child, or be looked up to in that sort of way.

He wasn't ready to have any claim over any child, no matter if they were Peter or not. All his mind could play back to him in that moment was the constant mantra of "Howard," over and over again, like his brain was desperately trying to remind Tony just exactly why he had such an aversion to the title. As if he could forget.

Surely, _surely_ the kid didn't know what he was talking about. The title of dad was heavy and strong, and Pete was probably throwing the word around for every Avenger that took care of him. Surely, Peter Parker did not see Tony Stark, a piping hot mess, to be his certified caretaker. Hell no. Absolutely not.

It was obvious that Peter was simply being a small child with no idea of how the world worked. In fact, earlier that morning, he had talked about his Dad coming back, not understanding he sadly never would due to the plane crash. But Peter was obviously looking past the fact that his Dad was dead, and instead was thinking the man was coming back; so of course, the boy's idea of subjects involving "Dad" was skewed. Right?

"It's okay young man," Gladus said, comforting the pale adult that was clearly shaken, "I'm not an intolerant buffoon like some people these days. Two men are just as capable as a straight pair."

Tony gaped at her, mouth opening and closing, trying to find the words to tell her she had everything all wrong. That really, she was making everything worse, and that she should really stop pushing the idea of Steve and him together deeper and deeper into the recesses of his mind. But she looked so convinced in her statement, and Peter was looking at him with big brown eyes, and Tony literally didn't know what else to do but nod and stare at the both of them as if they had a third eye. His shock (and slightly dissociative state) left him with the ability to do only that.

In a haze, he paid Gladus the two dollars needed for the biodegradable basket of blackberries, and followed Pete as the boy ran to the edge of the lake to feed the ducks. Tony never really saw such an activity as feeding ducks to be so exciting, but here Peter was, throwing berries in the lake with such enthusiasm, as if his life would amount to this moment, and only this moment.

Watching Peter, Tony felt an odd light lift in his chest, coupled with a deep throb lower in his rib cage. Emotion only slightly notched itself in his throat. Not the kind of emotion akin to the coming of tears, no. It felt more like fear.

"Uh. Pete, buddy. Why'd you tell old Gladus over there that I'm your… Dad?" Tony asked the boy, trying to catch his gaze. But Peter continued on, throwing berry after berry into the lake with some sort of rhythm that he had in his head. Tony almost believed Peter was too deep in duck-feeding to have heard him, and was about to repeat the words, when Peter paused his berry throwing to shrug. His shoulders rose to dramatic heights and stayed at his ears for a considerable amount of time, as if he had just started to learn how to shrug from observing others, and hadn't quite mastered the subject.

And although the prolonged shrug was cute, Tony couldn't move on from the subject. Even if his brain pleaded with him to pretend it never even happened.

"Peter, listen," Peter stopped throwing berries to look up at Tony with big brown eyes, probably sensing the seriousness of the man's tone, "Am I… What am I?" and that was a damn stupid way to ask that question, wasn't it? Tony quickly attempted to correct himself, "I mean, do you want to call me Dad? Am I Dad?"

And damn it, Tony's weak heart was pumping against the arc reactor like it was trying to get out. He honestly didn't know what would happen if Peter said yes in that moment. Would he accept his fate of being Dad? Would he spiral into panic? Would he scold Pete with the whole of Central Park watching? Would he dive headfirst into the lake in hopes responsibilities stayed on land? Anything was fair game in that moment.

Peter looked like he was thinking very hard on this one, staring straight into Tony's gaze. And then the kid must have reached a conclusion, because he looked very self-assured with himself as he said, "No. No, I don't want to call you Dad."

And fuck him, because if this wasn't one of the most wild emotional roller coasters he'd ever been on.

"Oh, right. Okay," and he honestly wasn't sure what he was feeling. It was an odd mix of relief and something that could have possibly been disappointment. Sadness, maybe? It was hard to decipher the tight ball of feelings replacing his thumping heart in that moment.

Peter nodded, obviously seeing the subject as resolved and over with, "Did you want to feed the ducks?"

The biodegradable basket was offered to him, little hands barely able to encapsulate the whole thing. Tony wordlessly accepted it, throwing it into the lake, completely lost in attempting to stave off an odd sort of panic attack. It wasn't a feeling he'd ever experienced before. It was something of a panic, sure, but it was filled with emotions that he couldn't discern. And he usually ignored his emotions, but this lodge of something foreign-feeling would not let it's presence go unnoticed.

Despite the haze of quasi-panic, Tony was still able to hear Peter talking. And the boy was quickly, and concerningly, becoming a mini-Rogers. The little monster was lecturing him about why they had to feed the ducks berries instead of hot dog buns, because Mr. Steve said that ducks couldn't handle digesting bread, and of course Steve (damn it, Tony's fucking brain used that word so endearingly) was worried about the digestive systems of ducks.

It was here, with Peter and the ducks and their digestive systems, that he began to ground himself once more. Talk of Rogers and "Auntie Nat" and "Uncle Clint" seeked to bring Tony back to reality, and he soon found himself being able to enjoy sitting in itchy grass next to a boy he had only known for about a month, feeding fruit to the attention whore of birds.

And the pair sat there for a good amount of time, feeding the ducks until there were no more berries to offer. In fact, the idea of going back to the tower did not even cross his mind, until he glanced down to Pete, just in time to catch the boy from picking a berry out of the lake that the ducks had failed to consume, and eating it himself. It was a quick but challenging grapple of hands, Tony desperately trying to pry the berry out of the small human hands. By the time he succeeded in getting the lake-infested berry out of Peter's hand, the both had berry juice artfully covering their hands, and there were tears streaming down Peter's cheeks because "he was hungry and wanted a berry, too."

It was only then that Tony announced it was time to head back home for lunch. They both said goodbye to Gladus, who handed them both a wipe for the berry mess in their hands and a small basket of cut strawberries for the road. Peter squealed happily at the strawberries, forgetting all about the salty tears on his cheeks, munching on strawberries all the way home.

By the time they reached the tower once more (taking a little longer than expected, due to the fact that Peter decide it necessary to take a twenty minute stop at the park of screaming children, seemingly forgetting he was ever hungry in the first place), it was past lunch, and grumpy Peter made it clear that he would not be eating the mediocre peanut butter and jelly sandwich Tony had prepared unless they both ate lunch on the living room floor. And of course Cap would have never allowed such a rebellious act, but Tony wasn't up for forcing the kid to sit at the dining table, and therefore allowed the command with little , more than happy to procrastinate work and bring Peter out of his foul mood, decided to join the boy for lunch on the ground with his Godzilla, Scooby-Doo, and out-of-place Obama figurine. Tony could only assume this was somehow Clint's doing.

Lunch on the floor lead to Peter feeling cautiously chaotic with the rule-breaking high, because by the time lunch ended, jelly and peanut butter had somehow gotten itself all over the boys face and in his hair.

Bath time occurred early that evening because of this, beginning with an exhausting chase after the elusive five year old monster who 'didn't need a bath' and 'liked the pb and j on his face just fine.' And even though it turned out to be quite a struggle to get the peanut butter out of the child's hair, Tony was ready this time for the ornery splashes of bath water Peter sent his way.

The rest of the day went by smoothly enough, despite Peter seeming bored and agitated by Tony's lack of ability to entertain while working on the new Stark smartphone prototype for the inevitable meeting the next day; a task that was no longer avoidable, despite how much Peter disapproved. And it ended up being clear that Peter didn't have nearly the right amount of energy spent throughout the day, when the child didn't immediately go to bed after a "James Buck" story. Peter's plea to sleep with Tony and "his chest nightlight" was begrudgingly agreed to, and next thing Tony knows, Peter spends another night sleeping in the guest room with him.

They went to sleep that night, Tony staring straight up at the ceiling as Peter slept on his chest, breathing deeply and twitching with a dream. The word "Dad" rang through his head, bouncing around as if a happy, yet anxious animal. He falls asleep to Peter's breathing, a smile lightly on his face.

* * *

 _I hope you guys enjoyed! I especially loved writing Pepper, because of course, who doesn't love their friendship? As always, reviews, comments, and kudos are my bread and butter! I love hearing what you all have to say, whether it be constructive criticism or gushing about all the things you liked about it!_

 _Onward to the next chapter! :D_


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